Preamble

The House met at half-past
Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

BUCKS WATER BOARD BILL (By Order)

Consideration, as amended, deferred till Thursday, 12th March.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

Chiropody Service

Mr. Kershaw: asked the Minister of Health whether he is yet in a position to announce an extension of the chiropody services provided under the National Health Service.

Mrs. Hill: asked the Minister of Health whether he will make a statement on the future of the chiropody services provided under the National Health Service Act.

Mr. J. Johnson: asked the Minister of Health what are his proposals for extending the chiropody services provided under the National Health Service.

Mr. Gower: asked the Minister of Health what plans he has to develop the chiropody services under the National Health Service Act; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Derek Walker-Smith): Yes, Sir. I am now ready to approve proposals by local health authorities who wish to provide a chiropody service as part of their arrangements for the prevention of illness under Section 28 of the National Health Service Act. I propose to consult the local authority associations immediately on the terms of a circular to be sent to the authorities.

Mr. Kershaw: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that that reply will give a great deal of satisfaction? May I ask him two questions? First, can he indicate what categories of people will be able to benefit by this; and secondly, will he give an assurance that the very considerable labours of voluntary organisations will not be lost as a consequence of this new step?

Mr. Walker-Smith: As to the first part of the supplementary question, this is, of course, a matter for the individual local health authorities, but I intend to ask them to give priority in the early years of the new service to the elderly, physically handicapped and expectant mothers. As to the second part concerning voluntary bodies, as my hon. Friend may know, from 1st April next local health authorities wishing to contribute to the funds of voluntary organisations under Section


28 (3) for the purposes of providing chiropody will not need to seek my approval to do so.

Mr. Johnson: As there are many outside the National Health Service who are now fully-qualified chiropodists, is it the right hon. and learned Gentleman's intention to invite them to take part in this larger service alongside the ancillary work now being done in hospitals?

Mr. Walker-Smith: Chiropodists employed by local health service authorities will need to possess one or other of the qualifications prescribed under the National Health Service Medical Auxiliary Regulations, 1954.

Mrs. Hill: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that there will be great satisfaction that this service is being extended? One most important point, however, is that those employed by all these bodies should be fully qualified according to the standards of the Society of Chiropodists. Does my right hon. and learned Friend hope that we shall have registration of those chiropodists very soon?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I am obliged to my hon. Friend for what she said at the beginning of her supplementary question. In regard to the latter part, there is a further Question on the Order Paper about these matters. On the generality of it, I think the House would wish that the standards for chiropodists in local health authority services should not be inferior to the general standard required.

Dr. Summerskill: While welcoming this announcement, may I put two questions to the right hon. and learned Gentleman? Firstly, when will this service come into operation, and secondly, will it be domiciliary?

Mr. Walker-Smith: As I said earlier, I am proposing to consult the local health authorities at once and then to send an appropriate circular. No doubt the local health authorities will wish to await the arrival of that to institute their services. In regard to the second part of the question, I would expect this service to be based on clinics.

Mr. Gower: While the cost will depend upon the speed with which the scheme is implemented by the local health authorities, can my right hon. and learned Friend

say what sort of total financial provision is to be made and whether he has any ideas on priorities which will follow on the full implementation of the scheme?

Mr. Walker-Smith: As my hon. Friend says, it is difficult to estimate the cost as it is dependent upon the take-up by the local health authorities. I should say that on a national basis it could be expected to rise to a figure of between £1 million and £2 million over a period of the next few years. As to priorities, I would, as I have said, hope that priority would be given to the elderly, the physically handicapped and expectant mothers.

Artificial Limbs

Dr. King: asked the Minister of Health if he will state the priority which exists in the supply of artificial limbs and appliances to war pensioners, the time taken to provide a new limb, and the average time now required to undertake major limb repairs at Roehampton.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Richard Thompson): Priority is given to war pensioners in the supply of artificial limbs whenever circumstances justify it. The average time taken to supply new limbs to all patients at Roehampton is at present about eighty-five days. Time taken for repairs varies according to the complexity of the job and its priority, but on average the most complex repairs take about eighty days.

Dr. King: Is the Minister aware that the artificial limb service, in which Britain leads the world, is much appreciated by the limbless ex-Service man, and that the only anxiety expressed from time to time concerns the length of time he has to wait for his limb? Can the Minister assure us that the average time he has quoted is not an increase on the previous average time?

Mr. Thompson: I am obliged to the hon. Member for what he has said. I think that I can give him the assurance for which he seeks. The average time indicated to him was in reply to his specific question about major limb repairs, but many repairs—in fact, almost half, throughout the country—are carried out in the centres without any delay. They are actually carried out on the same day. The average for all repairs in 1958 was about thirty-three days.

Mr. Simmons: Can the Minister say whether the recent amalgamation of the two main firms has had any effect upon the waiting period—either adversely or otherwise?

Mr. Thompson: I am not aware that it has had any adverse effect, but perhaps the hon. Member would put down a Question on the matter.

Mr. Arbuthnot: Are any steps being taken to reduce the average time taken for repairs?

Mr. Thompson: It is rather a difficult problem. So much of the time for the repair arises out of the lengthy process of prescription, measurement, fitting and that kind of thing. It is not the actual manufacture which takes up most of the time.

Mr. Simmons: asked the Minister of Health if he will make a statement of the benefits which have accrued to wearers of artificial limbs and appliances through the work of the Department of Research and Experiment at Roehampton; and what new items have been approved for general issue to amputees from the work of that department during the last two years.

Mr. R. Thompson: The research department plays a major part in artificial limb development by undertaking basic research, by initiating or developing new ideas and designs, by working with and advising the limb contractors on the contractors' own ideas for developments, by organising field trials, and by examining developments overseas or submitted from other sources so that promising new lines can be investigated. Forward set knees, suction sockets, anatomical tuber-bearing corsets and "Z" type below-elbow prostheses have become generally available in the last two years from the work of the department in conjunction with the limb contractors. In addition, various arm appliances have been designed for special needs, other developments have been approved and are about to go into production, and many projects are under way.

War Pensioners (Motor Cars and Tricycles)

Mr. Simmons: asked the Minister of Health if he will state the numbers of double below-knee amputee war pen-

sioners who have been provided with motor-propelled tricycles at State expense; and whether he will now grant direct entitlement to means of transport to all war pensioners who have lost both legs below knees.

Mr. R. Thompson: One hundred and fourteen in England and Wales have power-propelled tricycles and in addition 10 have cars provided, six receive a private car maintenance allowance, and a few have received car conversion grants instead of a tricycle. On the second part of the Question, I have nothing to add to the reply given to the hon. Member on 12th May, 1958.

Mr. Simmons: Is the Minister aware that a man with an above-knee amputation can get a motor car, although men with two legs amputated below the knee cannot even get a motor-propelled tricycle? Is not this unfair, and will not the Minister look into the question again?

Mr. Thompson: This matter has received much consideration. Automatic eligibility for all double below-knee amputations is not justifiable, since many such men cannot be said to have almost totally lost the use of their legs, or even to have their walking ability so restricted as to qualify them for machines for employment purposes.

Dr. Summerskill: Will not the hon. Gentleman look into this question again? Does he realise that these men who have had a double amputation below the knee are now getting older, and that during the years since the war extra strain has been thrown upon their healthy limbs and joints? We cannot look at this question, put now, as we might have looked at it when put immediately after the war. We should be more sympathetic as the years go on. Further, the number of these men must be very small, and must decrease over the years.

Mr. Thompson: I take the point raised by the right hon. Lady. We have kept this matter under continuous review, but the question of producing a new class or standard of eligibility is not one that we have been able to accept up till now.

Amputees (Treatment)

Mr. Simmons: asked the Minister of Health if he will make a statement outlining the steps taken by his Department


to provide relief for sufferers of phantom limb and amputation stump pains; what were the numbers of such amputees specially treated at Roehampton last year; and whether he will make details of these treatments and remedies widely known at provincial centres, so that larger numbers of amputees will be encouraged to request treatment.

Mr. R. Thompson: Treatment is given at a number of hospitals for phantom limb and amputation stump pains by the methods judged most appropriate in each case. At Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, a group of intractable cases has been reviewed and given recognised forms of treatment under the supervision of various specialists; 70 such cases were admitted in 1958 and of these 61 showed improvement. The methods used at Roehampton are generally known, and all medical staff at limb fitting centres are aware of the facilities available. The number of amputees requiring treatment for stump pain is quite small.

Mr. Simmons: The Minister will realise that the important part of the Question is making the details of the arrangements and remedies widely known. I know nothing about them. When the "phantom rides again" I shall have to grin and bear it, because I do not know the methods of obtaining the treatment. Cannot something be put into the pension order book, or some steps be taken to let all amputees know exactly what procedure they have to take when they are subject to these pains in phantom limbs?

Mr. Thompson: I have always had an open mind on this matter, but I wonder whether publicity is in all cases in the patient's interest. In many cases psychological treatment is necessary, and it may be impeded if the patient's attention has been fixed on his disability, or on one particular line of treatment. It is for the doctor and not the patient to decide whether a particular line is worth trying.

Midwives

Dr. Stross: asked the Minister of Health what percentage of the practising midwives in Stoke-on-Trent are trained in the administration of inhalation analgesics, as compared with the national

percentage; how many of them use gas and air; and how many use trilene.

Mr. R. Thompson: Thirty-three of the 37 domiciliary midwives in Stoke-on-Trent, or nearly 90 per cent., are trained in the administration of inhalation analgesics. The national percentage is about 95. All the Stoke-on-Trent midwives who give analgesia use gas and air.

Dr. Stross: In view of the fact that the gas and air apparatus is very heavy and cannot be easily carried about by hand, can the Parliamentary Secretary say whether motor vehicles will be supplied at any time in the future, and if not, why not?

Mr. Thompson: As the hon. Gentleman will know, trilene has no clinical advantage over gas and air, but it has the advantage of easier transportability. The question of the provision of vehicles would be a matter for the local authority.

Mr. J. Johnson: asked the Minister of Health if he is aware of the continuing shortage of midwives in Rugby; and what action he proposes taking consequent upon the findings of the Maternity Services Committee under the chairmanship of the Earl of Cranbrook.

Mr. R. Thompson: Yes, Sir, and as regards the first part of the Question, I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which my right hon. and learned Friend gave to the hon. Member for Barnsley (Mr. Mason) on 10th February; I am sending him a copy of the memorandum referred to in that answer. As regards the second part, I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which my right hon. and learned Friend gave to the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) on 20th January.

Mr. Johnson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many of my constituents wish to have their babies in hospital and not at home as their mothers did 25 or 30 years ago? Is he aware that at Harborough Magna Hospital there are empty beds because there are no midwives and nurses to deal with patients who wish to go there? Is he further aware that the findings of this Committee are most disappointing to many of us, and will he think again about this matter?

Mr. Thompson: Further consideration of this matter, the importance of which I fully recognise, is bound up with considering the recommendations of the Cranbrook Report very thoroughly. This is going on in consultation with the numerous bodies concerned.

Dr. Summerskill: In view of the fact that Questions similar to this are put down on other occasions, is the hon. Gentleman doing anything to transfer midwives from areas where there is adequate provision to places such as my hon. Friend's constituency?

Mr. Thompson: That is a very difficult question, because we can persuade but we cannot direct anybody. Normally there is a very considerable difference between the hospital and the domiciliary service. My right hon. and learned Friend is concerned specifically with the hospital service.

Food Hygiene (Foreign Countries)

Mr. Teeling: asked the Minister of Health what steps he takes to warn British travellers abroad against eating clams and other fish food in countries where the hygiene regulations are not as strict as in Great Britain.

Mr. R. Thompson: The Ministry's notice to travellers going abroad advises them all to be vaccinated against typhoid and paratyphoid fevers, which are diseases that may be transmitted by food, including shellfish. Apart from this no special advice is given.

Mr. Teeling: Does my hon. Friend realise that there has been considerable publicity during the last few weeks in connection with a case involving two of my constituents? Is he aware that there is nervousness among people going abroad and a feeling that there should be more guidance provided? Can he tell us whether these statements are given at all places where one buys tickets or whether it is provided only on official documents?

Mr. Thompson: The advice in the notice to travellers is also contained in a booklet. "Essential Information for the Citizens of the U.K. and Colonies who intend to travel overseas", which is issued by the Passport Office. Despite what has been said by my hon. Friend, I think it would be invidious to attempt to classify

overseas countries with special regard to the nature of their hygiene regulations.

Mr. Snow: Are wet nurses also to be provided?

Smoking (Lung Cancer)

Mr. Hastings: asked the Minister of Health whether, in view of the steadily increasing death rate from cancer of the lung, and the need for direct evidence and an authoritative statement as to the relationship between smoking and this disease, he will recommend the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the matter.

Mr. Walker-Smith: This is a matter for scientific research and assessment, rather than for a Royal Commission. In 1957 the Medical Research Council made an authoritative assessment of the evidence then available, and research is continuing.

Mr. Hastings: Does not the right hon. and learned Gentleman realise that the public is waiting for an authoritative statement by an independent body and perhaps rather suspects doctors and the other members of the Medical Research Council? The public is being told one thing by the Medical Research Council and something quite different by the tobacco manufacturers, and it wants to know what is true. Would it not be useful if the right hon. Gentleman set up a Royal Commission of responsible men and women to come to some conclusion and let the public know the truth?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I would be sorry to think that the public was suspicious of doctors in this or, indeed, in any other context. On medical and scientific questions, it is advisable to have regard to the careful assessments made by doctors and scientists. The Medical Research Council, in a statement in 1957, concluded that it was reasonable to associate a major part of the great increase in lung cancer with tobacco smoking. No new information of major significance has come to hand since then, but there have been follow-up reports from various countries that have tended to confirm that assessment.

Chiropodists (Registration)

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Minister of Health whether he will make a further statement regarding the registration of


chiropodists and the use of fully qualified chiropodists in a national chiropody service for old people.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I have in draft a scheme for the registration of medical auxiliaries (which includes the registration of chiropodists) on which I am further consulting the medical profession. Meanwhile the qualifications of chiropodists employed in the National Health Service are governed by statutory Regulations.

Mr. Blenkinsop: In view of the announcement that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has already made this afternoon about the development of the chiropody service, is it not desirable to press on more rapidly with the registration of chiropodists? Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman consider also a separate scheme for them and keep in mind the need for the development of a domiciliary service as well as a clinical service?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I should be very reluctant to abandon the attempt to have a general registration scheme in respect of medical auxiliaries and have to embark upon piecemeal legislation for these various classes of auxiliary. I do not think that would be as good an approach as the one that we have in mind. I hope before long that we shall conclude these discussions to the satisfaction of all.

Mrs. Hill: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that a scheme was propounded as far back as 1956, a comprehensive scheme which he desires but on which there has not been a settlement? Is he further aware that the chiropodists are frustrated because they have had their house in order for so long and have had to wait for other people who cannot make up their minds?

Mr. Walker-Smith: My hon. Friend will no doubt appreciate the importance of further discussions with the medical profession, whose point of view is material to chiropodists' registration as well as to that of the other medical auxiliaries. I should be sorry to embark upon an individual scheme for the chiropodists, because I am not satisfied that it would be easy for each of the medical auxiliaries to have a scheme of their own if they were not able to come under some comprehensive arrangement.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman say something about the need for domiciliary care in the chiropody service, because these are the cases that most need attention?

Mr. Walker-Smith: Yes, I appreciate that. That would be for examination in the ordinary way in the context of the individual circumstances of each local health authority. I would like to consider that point further in my consultations with the local authorities, before issuing the circular to which I have referred.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOSPITALS

Mental Patients (Payments)

Dr. Dodds: asked the Minister of Health when action is to be taken to improve the scales of payment to patients in mental hospitals for work of a reasonably high standard, substituting, wherever suitable, payment by cash in place of tobacco allowances.

Mr. R. Thompson: Work undertaken by patients in mental and mental deficiency hospitals is essentially a part of treatment. Remuneration as such is therefore not payable, but incentives in cash or kind are normally provided. Their nature and amount is, however, a matter for decision in the light of the medical needs of individual patients.

Mr. Dodds: Is the Parliamentary Secretary saying that it would retard the progress of a patient to pay a few shillings into an account each week to be used for him when he comes out of the mental hospital? Does not he think it regrettable that, when his Ministry is warning the public against smoking, patients who are deprived of liberty because they cannot look after themselves outside are paid with tobacco? Is it not disgraceful, especially since they are paid two ounces of tobacco weekly for thirty-eight hours of work of a reasonably high standard?

Mr. Thompson: We must allow hospital authorities some discretion in running these schemes. As he will know, some hospitals already run small industrial units, on broadly commercial lines, and here the incentives are often much greater than the hon. Member has suggested. Those patients who go out to work will receive normal wages from their


employers and make maintenance payments to the hospital.

Mr. K. Robinson: Is the Minister aware that there is an increasing tendency to make incentive payments in cash, but that some hospital management committees are reluctant to make this change? Will he and his right hon. Friend do all they can to induce management committees to make cash payments wherever possible?

Mr. Thompson: I will consider that, and no doubt the publicity resulting from these questions and answers will draw attention to this matter.

Dr. Summerskill: Can the Minister tell the House in what proportion of hospitals there is this graduated payment?

Mr. Thompson: Not without notice.

Mr. Dodds: Owing to the very unsatisfactory answer, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Pharmacists

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Minister of Health if he is aware that pharmacists working in mental hospitals suffer financial disadvantage compared with those working in general hospitals; and if he will take steps, through his representatives on the appropriate Whitley Council, to remove this anomaly, especially in view of the rapid growth of chemotherapy in the treatment of mental disorder.

Mr. Walker-Smith: The rates of pay of pharmacists in mental hospitals, other than chief pharmacists, are the same as those for pharmacists in general hospitals. The rates of pay of the chief pharmacists vary in accordance with a points scheme which takes into account, amongst other things, the size and type of hospital, and was agreed by the Pharmaceutical Whitley Council. The scheme is at present under review by the Whitley Council and the information being obtained will doubtless reflect any changes in the pharmaceutical work in mental hospitals.

Mr. Robinson: Whatever may have been the historical reason for this differentiation among chief pharmacists, is he aware that it has caused difficulties in

recruitment for mental hospitals in the past? In view of this new development of drug treatment in mental hospitals the need for differentiation has completely disappeared. Will the Minister do what he can, through the Whitley Council, to see that this anomaly is removed?

Mr. Walker-Smith: We had better await the results of this inquiry, which I understand should be available to the Whitley Council in the near future.

Charing Cross Hospital

Mr. M. Stewart: asked the Minister of Health what decision he has reached on the proposals made to him by the governors of Charing Cross Hospital concerning the future size of the hospital.

Mr. Walker-Smith: No decision has yet been reached; consultations with the responsible hospital boards are still proceeding.

Mr. Stewart: Am I right in supposing that, as at present planned, the control of the building at Fulham will pass to the governors of the Charing Cross Hospital on 1st April? Is the Minister aware that the governors of Charing Cross have stated that they are not anxious to proceed with the projected building unless the hospital can be what they consider an adequate size? In view of this, ought we not to have a decision?

Mr. Walker-Smith: No, Sir, because constructive discussions are taking place between the boards, with the assistance of my officers, regarding the appropriate size of the hospital. Since they met my officers, the boards have been in consultation with a view to submitting revised proposals, and a further meeting with my officers will take place shortly.

Mr. Stewart: Can the Minister say when a decision is likely to be reached?

Mr. Walker-Smith: Clearly, it will not be reached before the meeting with my officers after the submission of the revised proposals from the two boards.

Mr. M. Stewart: asked the Minister of Health what arrangements will be made, when Charing Cross Hospital is moved to Fulham, for admission of patients under the emergency bed service.

Mr. Walker-Smith: It would be premature at this stage to determine what arrangements should be made, since it will be several years before the move takes place.

Mr. Stewart: Does the Minister realise that in Fulham we keep hearing various more or less authentic reports of decisions which have been reached on this and other matters? Would it not be helpful to know exactly what is to happen?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I am sure that I shall have the assistance of the hon. Gentleman in indicating that some of these reports must be less rather than more authentic. I have given him the position in answer to his last Question, and I do not foresee any difficulty regarding the point which he has under inquiry in this Question.

Doctors

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Minister of Health what steps he will take to ensure that sufficient doctors qualified in Great Britain or with some post-graduate training in Britain are available to fill outstanding vacancies up to and including registrar grade in the hospital service.

Mr. Walker-Smith: I do not consider that special steps are needed. The number of doctors available for civilian employment will increase between now and 1962 as the number of medical officers needed by the Armed Forces declines.

Mr. Robinson: Is the Minister aware that, for example, in a hospital in Wales the authorities have been unable for five years to recruit any British qualified doctor for the positions of house surgeon and house physician, and that there is a very well known hospital in London where it has been found impossible to fill the post of orthopaedic house surgeon? In view of those circumstances, does not the right hon. and learned Gentleman think that some urgent action is required?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I will consider the question of the individual hospitals mentioned by the hon. Gentleman if he cares to send me particulars. Generally speaking, the position is improving. There has been a substantial intake in the general hospital medical services for

England and Wales in the last two years. In 1956–57, the latest period for which figures are available, the number is appreciably more than was visualised as necessary by the Willink Committee.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Will the Minister assure the House that he is doing nothing to recommend the adoption of the proposal of the Willink Committee that there should be a reduction in the numbers coming into the medical training section?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I defined the position regarding the Willink Committee at the time when it reported. Obviously I am now keeping an eye on the general trends. As I say, the intake in 1956–57 has been higher than the Committee visualised as being necessary. That fact, together with the increasing number of doctors from the Armed Forces becoming available, should meet the question which the hon. Gentleman has in mind.

Mental Hospitals (Wards)

Dr. D. Johnson: asked the Minister of Health what returns he receives from mental hospitals as to the proportion of open and closed wards, respectively, in individual hospitals.

Mr. Walker-Smith: No regular returns of this information are made to me.

Dr. Johnson: Is the Minister aware that the outbreaks of violence, or complaints of outbreaks, such as were discussed in this House last week and previously on the B.B.C., and about which many hon. Members who are interested receive information, may be prevented principally by the policy of open wards which has been pursued by so many hospitals in the last two or three years? Will my right hon. and learned Friend do everything in his power to see that this policy is adopted even by those more backward hospitals where it is not yet in operation?

Mr. Walker-Smith: My hon. Friend will be aware of the figures which emerged from the special inquiry into this matter in 1957. Then the acceptance of the therapeutic value of the open door principle was shown to be widespread. It has further increased during the time which has elapsed since that inquiry. Of course, there will always be a minority of patients for whom, as part of their hospital care and treatment, the maintenance of adequate security precautions is essential.

Pneumoconiosis, Stoke-on-Trent

Dr. Stress: asked the Minister of Health how many beds are now available in Stoke-on-Trent for the treatment of Pneumoconiosis and its complications, other than tuberculosis; and whether he will make a statement on the efficacy of this provision.

Mr. R. Thompson: Twenty-four beds are available, and my information indicates that this is fully adequate.

Dr. Stross: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that I did not ask him whether it was adequate? I asked about the efficacy of this new form of treatment. Am I right in believing that it is spectacularly good in many cases? If that be so, can the hon. Gentleman say what steps the Ministry will take to see that this provision is made more widespread and available to other areas where the problem of pneumoconiosis and its complications exists?

Mr. Thompson: I took the hon. Gentleman's question to refer to the adequacy of the provision of beds, meaning the actual number of beds. Regarding the adequacy of the treatment, which appears to have been the point raised by the hon. Gentleman, I have every reason to believe that it is successful; but I should like to look into that matter and write to the hon. Gentleman about it.

Pay-beds

Mr. Hastings: asked the Minister of Health if he will give the percentage of beds reserved for patients who pay for both accommodation and treatment in the hospitals under his direction in each of the last five years; and whether the percentage of empty places in such beds was greater or less than in those not so reserved.

Mr. Walker-Smith: The proportion of hospital beds designated for private patients in each of the last five years for which figures are available slightly exceeds 1 per cent. of the whole; the percentage of empty places in such beds was greater than in others.

Mr. Hastings: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that there is an idea that instead of these pay-beds being used as ordinary beds they are being kept vacant in many cases waiting

for paying patients? Is there any evidence that this is the case, or is it not so?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I have no evidence that that is the case. As the hon. Gentleman knows, private beds are available for Health Service patients who urgently require accommodation on medical grounds and for whom no other suitable accommodation is available. That is provided for in Section 5 of the National Health Service Act, and I have no reason to suppose that it is not observed.

Mr. Hastings: Must these cases be urgent when there is a large waiting list? Although cases are not urgent, could they not be accommodated in these pay-beds?

Mr. Walker-Smith: I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the language of the Act, which is:
any patient who urgently needs that accommodation on medical grounds
We are all bound by the language of the statute.

Geriatric Service, Newcastle upon-Tyne

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Minister of Health when it is proposed to extend the hospital geriatric service in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in view of the present shortage of hospital beds.

Mr. R. Thompson: The regional hospital board has already done a great deal to improve geriatric services in Newcastle, and my right hon. and learned Friend relies on them to make further improvements as opportunity offers.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, owing to the considerable shortage of these beds in Newcastle, patients have to go a considerable way into neighbouring authorities to find accommodation where it is impossible to treat the patients adequately?

Mr. Thompson: I recognise the importance of the problem, but as the hon. Gentleman will know, the board has appointed a committee to advise it on the planning of the hospital service in Newcastle generally. Any suggestion which the committee makes for the general improvement of the geriatric service will certainly receive the fullest consideration.

East Glamorgan

Mr. Gower: asked the Minister of Health what step he will take to shorten the waiting period for patients awaiting entry into hospital in the East Glamorgan area.

Mr. R. Thompson: Hospital facilities generally in this area will continue to be improved and developed. The appointment of additional consultants has been authorised and a number of beds previously set aside for the treatment of tuberculosis is becoming available for other uses.

BRITAIN AND FRANCE (AFRICAN TERRITORIES)

Mr. Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will consult the French Government with a view to a mutual arrangement by which territories at present under British and French administration in Africa, including trusteeship territories, may become united with independent status when their people so desire.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. John Profumo): It would not be appropriate to approach this question in the general terms indicated by the hon. Member. A decision on whether and when a territory should become independent and, if so, whether it would be appropriate for Her Majesty's Government to undertake consultations with other Governments about the possible union or association of the territory with another territory, must depend on the circumstances of the particular case.

Mr. Brockway: Would not the Minister of State agree that this is now becoming a wider and increasingly urgent question? Is he not aware that there is already misunderstanding in Paris about the decision of the Republic of Guinea to link with Ghana and that problems will arise in the South Cameroons and between British and French Somaliland? Is it not desirable that there should be these discussions with independent African States, who seek to end the artificial and arbitrary frontiers which now exist?

Mr. Profumo: I do not think the question is wider than the answer I gave.

FAR EAST (NUCLEAR-FREE ZONE)

Mr. Zilliacus: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will agree to discuss the Soviet Government's proposal for the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Far East, and will as a first step propose to refrain from introducing nuclear weapons or bases into the territories of Tai-Wan, South Korea, or any of the Far Eastern South-East Asia Treaty Organisation powers, in return for similar action by the People's Republic of China, North Korea and North Viet Nam, and by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in its maritime provinces in Siberia.

Mr. Profumo: If the hon. Member is referring to some recent remarks by the Soviet Prime Minister, the answer is "No, Sir." I cannot discuss so vague a suggestion, let alone make a proposal of the kind suggested by the hon. Member.

Mr. Zilliacus: Is it not a fact that the United States is introducing nuclear weapons and bases into Formosa and Southern Korea, and eventually into Southern Viet Nam? Would it not be desirable to take action to prevent the situation in that part of the world becoming more and more dangerous and explosive instead of doing nothing until an incident occurs?

Mr. Profumo: That is really rather more a matter for the United States Government than for Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Zilliacus: Is it not a matter Her Majesty's Government should say something about?

NUCLEAR TESTS

Mr. Boyd: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what estimate he has made of the relative extent to which the nuclear researches of Western Powers would be hindered as compared with those of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics under an agreement to suspend such nuclear tests as could be detected by the best inspection arrangements which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has so far been willing to accept.

Mr. Profumo: We should be at a complete disadvantage because the present proposals of the Soviet Government would give us no assurance against the carrying out of clandestine tests of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Boyd: Do the Government accept that the largest and dirtiest explosions register anyway on appropriate instruments in any part of the world? Would it not be well worth while to see that the greatest danger to health and in other respects could be obviated by getting an agreement on the suspension of those tests which could be detected by the inspection arrangements which the Russians are prepared to agree to, granted that this would be more limited, so that we got a limited agreement and then proceeded to negotiate to see what prospects there are of further advance?

Mr. Profumo: We are hoping to get agreement on suspension of all tests.

Mr. Bevan: is it not a fact that it is already possible to detect significant tests? Would it not be very much better to start there in the hope that it would be possible to extend to other tests later? Should not some initiative be taken to give more hope than exists at the moment?

Mr. Profumo: I do not think anything we have done or which is in our power to do is leading to lack of hope. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we are anxious to get an agreement, but I do not see how we can get it until we have ironed out the difficulties of a control of tests and inspection system.

Mr. Bevan: Is it not a fact that the Russians have offered to suspend tests, and while it is understood in all parts of the House that it is better to have a refined and controlled system, would it not be better to get an agreement to stop tests, knowing that if they are significant they can in fact be detected?

Mr. Profumo: I think we must not give up hope of full agreement on this matter.

Mr. A. Henderson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to what extent evidence in the possession of Her Majesty's Government indicates that subterranean nuclear test explosions and

hidden stockpiles of nuclear weapons, respectively, can be detected if a system of international inspection were established.

Mr. Profumo: As to underground nuclear explosions, I would refer the right hon. and learned Member to paragraph 18 on page 7 of the White Paper on the Geneva Conference of Experts which was tabled last October. Since then the United States Government have given us and the Soviet Government certain new evidence which suggests that the capability of the system recommended by the Conference of Experts would not be so great as originally thought. As to the second part of the Question, there is no method known to scientists whereby hidden stocks of nuclear weapons can be detected.

Mr. Henderson: With regard to the first part of the reply, will the hon. Gentleman say that that qualification put forward by the American scientists will not be allowed to hold up an agreement on the suspension of the tests?

Mr. Profumo: Yes Sir, but I think the right hon. and learned Member would agree that this is a matter which has to be looked at carefully.

IRAQ (SUPPLY OF ARMS)

Mr. Swingler: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what reply he will make to the requests received from the Iraqi Government for supplies of arms.

Mr. Profumo: Several requests for arms have been received from the Iraq Government and some, including some dating from before the revolution, have been met. Others are still under consideration.

Mr. Swingler: Will the hon. Gentleman state what are the criteria that are applied in these cases? Are arms being supplied to Iraq on the basis that Iraq is a member of the Bagdad Pact or on the basis that Iraq is not a member of the Bagdad Pact? In view of the misinformation which has resulted in the supply of arms to other parts of the world by Her Majesty's Government, are the Government quite sure that this policy should not be reviewed?

Mr. Profumo: My right hon. Friend told the House on 18th February the principles which govern Her Majesty's Government's policy in supplying arms to foreign Powers. I have nothing to add to that.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Before the Government supply more arms to Iraq, will they insist on payment being made for damage sustained when the British Embassy was burned down last year?

Mr. Profumo: That is rather a different question. Perhaps my hon. Friend will put it down.

Mr. Younger: In view of the fact that, it is only a day or two since the House was told by one of the Ministers of the Foreign Office—I cannot remember who—that the Tripartite Declaration, in the view of the Government, was in force in this matter, can we be told whether that is the policy which governs the giving of arms, or the Bagdad Pact, or what?

Mr. Profumo: That is certainly taken into consideration.

BAGDAD PACT (BILATERAL NEGOTIATIONS)

Mr. Swingler: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to what extent Her Majesty's Government, as a member of the Bagdad Pact Council, have been consulted by the United States Government about bilateral negotiations for military pacts between the United States of America and member States of the Bagdad Pact, with the exception of Iraq; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Profumo: As my right hon. and gallant Friend the then Minister of State informed the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) on 15th December, Her Majesty's Government have been kept generally informed, both by the United States Government and by her Allies in the Bagdad Pact, of the progress of these negotiations. Pending the actual conclusion of the bilateral agreements. I have no statement to make.

Mr. Swingler: What is the basis of Anglo-American understanding in this case? Does not the negotiation of these bilateral pacts show some lack of faith in the Bagdad Pact? Do Her Majesty's Government share with the Americans

lack of faith in the Bagdad Pact and by making bilateral negotiations show that that is their viewpoint?

Mr. Profumo: No. These bilateral negotiations in no way show lack of faith in the Bagdad Pact.

FOREIGN OFFICE OFFICIALS (AIR TRAVEL)

Mr. Leather: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how many officers of his Department flew on official journeys between the United Kingdom and the United States of America on commercial airlines; and how many flew first class and how many tourist class in the last twelve months for which figures are available.

Mr. Profumo: Between 1st February, 1958, and 31st January, 1959, seventy-two, of which fifty-one flew first class.

Mr. Leather: Would my hon. Friend say whether the allocations as to who goes first class and who goes tourist are laid down by any rule of seniority or if it is purely at the discretion of the head of the mission?

Mr. Profumo: The rule for the Foreign Office is that only officers of the rank of Counsellor (A6) and above may travel first class if tourist seats are available. However, the figures I have given do not give a picture of what usually happens since two of these major journeys had to be changed at the last minute when there were no tourist seats available.

PANAMA (TERRITORIAL WATERS)

Mr. A. Henderson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a statement on the recent extension by the Government of Panama of their territorial waters limit from three to 12 miles; and what representations he has made to that power in respect of the British interests affected.

Mr. Profumo: On 18th December, 1958. Panama declared the extension of its sovereign rights in a twelve-mile zone of territorial sea along all its coasts. On 12th January, 1959, Her Majesty's Ambassador at Panama delivered a Note stating that Her Majesty's Government were not able to recognise any extension of territorial waters pending any decision


that might be reached at the Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1960.

Mr. Henderson: Did the representation indicate that in the event of this limitation ever becoming effective it would cover the Panama itself?

Mr. Profumo: No, Sir, it would not.

Oral Answers to Questions — GERMANY

Foreign Ministers' Conference

Mr. A. Henderson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to what extent it is the policy of Her Majesty's Government that representatives of both the Federal Republic of Germany and the East German authorities should act as advisers at the proposed four-Power Foreign Ministers' conference.

Mr. Profumo: The policy of Her Majesty's Government is set out in their Note of 16th February, which said:
It is suggested that German advisers should be invited to the conference and should be consulted.
How this would be applied would have to be agreed between the four Powers concerned.

Mr. Henderson: Is it not the view of Her Majesty's Government that sooner rather than later representatives of both East Germany and West Germany should get round the council table together at such a conference at this?

Mr. Profumo: That is a wider question, but if the right hon. and learned Member looks at the Answer he will see that I have given general assent to it.

Berlin

Mr. Zilliacus: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will give an assurance that the Government will seek to settle the question of communications with Berlin, after the end of May, on the basis of the treaty obligations of the United Nations Charter.

Mr. Profumo: If the hon. Member is asking whether Her Majesty's Government will act in accordance with the aims and principles of the Charter of the United Nations I can certainly give him the assurance which he seeks. I trust that the Soviet Government will do likewise.

Mr. Zilliacus: Surely the hon. Gentleman realises that what I asked was whether the Government were prepared to observe the obligations of the Charter for the settlement of disputes by pacific means and refraining from resort to force on one's own view of one's rights? Are the Government prepared to uphold that idea?

Mr. Profumo The hon. Member had better look at my Answer. I have answered the Question.: 

Mr. Zilliacus: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will propose to the United States, French, and Soviet Governments that, failing agreement before the end of May on the status of Berlin, they should join with Her Majesty's Government in requesting the Security Council, under Article 38 of the Charter, to make recommendations for the pacific settlement of the dispute and, also, under Article 40, to propose provisional measures to prevent an aggravation of the situation, pending a settlement.

Mr. Profumo: This is a hypothetical Question and I am not prepared to say what proposals Her Majesty's Government might make.

Mr. Zilliacus: Would the hon. Gentleman not say something to dispel the impression that the Government are so busy preparing for a military showdown in three months that they have no time left to work out a method of peaceful settlement?

Mr. Profumo: It is very much the hon. Gentleman and some like him who are creating this impression rather than Her Majesty's Government.

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: Was the last supplementary question asked by the hon. Member for Gorton (Mr. Zilliacus) helpful or unhelpful to Her Majesty's potential enemies?

Mr. Paget: While the United Nations are discussing this, what would our garrison use for food?

Mr. Profumo: I think that that is even more hypothetical than the hon. Member's Question.

Mr. Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in


view of the statement in the recent British note to the Soviet Government as to the alleged danger to world peace inherent in the latter's initiative in respect of Berlin, he will now bring the matter to the attention of the Security Council under Articles 34 and 35 of the Charter, as constituting a situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute, and the continuance of which might endanger the maintenance of peace.

Mr. Profumo: No, Sir.

Mr. Brockway: While it is desirable to have a summit conference at the earliest possible moment, has it not been indicated that that would be in association with the United Nations and is it not desirable that in the background there should be the influence not only of our Government but also of the neutral Governments of the world to secure peace?

Mr. Profumo: We are certainly not excluding the possibility of reference to the United Nations, if that seemed appropriate.

Mr. Shinwell: Can the hon. Member say whether the latest reports coming from Moscow do not indicate that the Soviet Government are ready to agree to a Foreign Minister's conference on the subject of Berlin?

Mr. Profumo: If the right hon. Gentleman does not mind, it would be very much wiser if we awaited the return of the Prime Minister and let him state the position more fully than some of the newspapers have stated it.

Mr. Younger: Have the Government noted that in one of the official notes of the Soviet Union two or three weeks ago reference was made to the possibility of the United Nations having a rôle to play in the settlement of Berlin? Is not this something which one would previously have expected the Soviet Government to exclude? Should we not regard it as an encouraging sign? May we take it that, despite the hon. Member's rather discouraging replies, the Government are seriously considering the part which the United Nations may take in this matter?

Mr. Profumo: I had not meant to be discouraging and I am grateful to the right hon. Member for his intervention. We must take some sort of encouragement from the statement to which he referred.

Mr. Rankin: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make available to the House the full text of the statement to the Press made in Washington on 6th February by Her Majesty's Ambassador, Sir Harold Caccia; and whether he will give particulars of the detailed military planning to meet emergencies arising in connection with Berlin mentioned in that statement.

Mr. Swingler: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the nature of inter-Allied military planning on communications with Berlin, referred to by Her Majesty's Ambassador in Washington in a Press statement on 6th February, and on the parallel political planning on ways and means of affecting a peaceful settlement of the Berlin question according to procedures prescribed by the United Nations Charter.

Mr. Profumo: Her Majesty's Ambassador gave an informal Press Conference. No written statement was issued.
As regards the second parts of both Questions, the answer is "No, Sir."

Mr. Rankin: In view of the fact that no military planning was envisaged in this visit, will the hon. Member take note of the advice offered him this morning by the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) in a letter to The Times in which he said that we should declare that we will not use tanks to get into Berlin but that we will use Berlin to reunify Germany and at the same time give Russia the assurance that, having achieved reunification, we will not use it to wage war upon her?

Mr. Profumo: The Government always pay the closest attention to what my noble Friend says or writes, but I fail to see what that has to do with Her Majesty's Ambassador in Washington.

Mr. Swingler: Is it not a fact that the British Ambassador in Washington said that a senior officer had been sent to Washington for the purpose of military planning? Will the hon. Member not state—because the people of Britain and the world are entitled to know—for what purpose the officer was engaging in these discussions, under what circumstances the use of military force was contemplated and what political procedures Her


Majesty's Government intend to undertake before contemplating the use of military force?

Mr. Profumo: The Question refers to a Press conference. The purpose of the conference was to draw attention to speculative Press reports, about secret talks, which inaccurately represented the British attitude.

LISBON (MR. AND MRS. TRIST)

Mr. Teeling: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make a statement on the findings concerning the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Trist, of Stanford Avenue, Brighton, in a chalet, near Lisbon; what steps he has taken to make sure that the diagnosis of the cause of death at the inquest at Almada was correct; and what assistance has been given to the relatives to enable the bodies to be brought home and to be seen by British doctors.

Mr. Profumo: An official inquiry into the causes of death in this sad case was undertaken by the Portuguese authorities as provided by their law. At his request, Her Majesty's Embassy in Lisbon arranged for a British doctor, who stated that he was acting for the Trists' estate, to discuss the findings with the authorities in charge of the inquiry. Upon hearing the wishes of the relatives, Her Majesty's Embassy in Lisbon immediately made arrangements with local undertakers for the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Trist to be flown to this country, and I understand that they have now arrived.

Mr. Teeling: In view of the fact that the Portuguese coroner is reported to have stated that there was enough carbon monoxide in Mrs. Trist's body to kill her, presumably from the leakage of the geyser, and in view of the fact that the English doctor who went out there was also informed that there were no poisonous clams along the Portuguese coast at that time of year, and further in view of the fact that this is causing considerable worry in my constituency, will my hon. Friend tell me what are the next steps to be taken?

Mr. Profumo: I understand that there is to be an inquest by the Southwark coroner. To that extent we must regard the matter as still sub judice.

ANGLO-DANISH AGREEMENT (FAROESE FISHING LIMITS)

Mr. Wall: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he is now in a position to make a further statement about the proposed agreement with the Danish Government about the fishing limits in the Faroes.

Lady Tweedsmuir: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is now in a position to make a further statement on the proposed Anglo-Danish agreement concerning fishing limits round the Faroes.

Mr. Awbery: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on what date the Anglo-Danish agreement about Faroese fishing limits is expected to take effect; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Edward Evans: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs when the new agreement reached in relation to the fishing limits in Faroese waters will become effective.

Mr. Profumo: I would refer the hon. Members to the answer given by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to the hon. Member for Banff (Mr. Duthie) on 26th February. The agreement provides for the new arrangements to come into force on signature, for which no date has yet been fixed.

Mr. Wall: Can my hon. Friend say when the agreement is likely to come into force? Will it be very soon? Will he say that this agreement shows how far the Government and the fishing industry are prepared to go to reach a negotiated solution of these questions?

Mr. Profumo: I can say "Yes" to the last part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question. In reply to the first part of his supplementary question, there is a good deal of preparatory work still to be done before we can bring the agreement into being, and it will have to be done before we sign.

Mr. Edward Evans: Was the agreement signed on the basis of the conservation of the fishing waters there or was there a fear of the Danes that there might be undue competition if our vessels were


allowed to fish there? Further, were any concessions made by the Danes in respect of our concession on over-fishing, of which they are one of the biggest operators in herring in the south North Sea?

Mr. Profumo: I am sure that all those considerations were borne in mind.

Lady Tweedsmuir: While welcoming the fact that an agreement has been reached by negotiation, may I ask my hon. Friend whether he is aware that the denial of this fishing ground to Scottish fishermen will have very serious effects? Will this be taken into account by the Fleck Committee when considering the future of the fishing industry?

Mr. Profumo: I must refer that question to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Mr. Younger: Will the Government consider approaching Iceland once again now that it has been shown that by reasonable negotiation some agreement may be reached?

Mr. Profumo: I think the right hon. Gentleman knows that we have made it very clear to Iceland that we are prepared to negotiate. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has again called attention to this fact.

EGYPT (MR. SWINBURN AND MR. ZARB)

Mr. Wall: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps he is taking to secure the release of Mr. Swinburn and Mr. Zarb, imprisoned by the Egyptian Government.

Mr. Profumo: I have nothing to add to the answer my right hon. and learned Friend gave to my hon. Friend on 12th November.

Mr. Wall: Would not my hon. Friend agree that the spirit of any agreement likely to be signed with the United Arab Republic would be much better if these two men were released?

Mr. Profumo: The question of the release of these two men is different from that of the signing of a financial agreement.

LAOS (GENEVA AGREEMENTS)

Mr. Warbey: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps he has taken, as co-Chairman of the Geneva Conference, to call the attention of the Royal Laotian Government to the messages addressed by the two co-Chairmen on 31st January to the Indian Government and to the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Laos.

Mr. Profumo: The texts of the two messages in question were conveyed to the Royal Laotian Government.

Mr. Warbey: Has the Minister's attention been called to a leading article in the New York Times of 23rd February in which it is stated that
the denunciation of the Geneva Agreements of 1954 by the tiny beleaguered Kingdom of Laos is realistic"?
In view of the uncertainty about the position, will the Minister make it clear that the Government consider the Laotian Government still bound by the Geneva Agreements?

Mr. Profumo: The Government's position is that we do not believe that the Laotian Government have repudiated the Geneva Agreements.

Mr. Warbey: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what reply he has made to the communication sent to him by the Chinese Foreign Minister regarding the attitude of the Royal Laotian Government towards the Geneva agreements and the introduction into Laos of United States arms and military personnel in contravention of those agreements.

Mr. Profumo: No reply has been sent so far.

Mr. Warbey: Will the Minister take into account the undoubted fact that there is substantial American military aid to Laos and that this is probably being done in contravention of the Geneva Agreements? Will he request the Indian Government to reconvene the International Commission for Laos in order that the facts may be investigated and reported?

Mr. Profumo: Nothing has been done in contravention of the Agreements.

ANGLO-EGYPTIAN FINANCIAL AGREEMENT

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Derick Heathcoat Amory): The Financial Agreement with Egypt which was initialled on 16th January was signed last Saturday in Cairo by representatives of the two Governments, and came into effect immediately. The main provisions of the agreement are as follows.
First, the United Arab Republic Government will release to the owners, under an agreed procedure, the British properties which they at present hold in sequestration.
Secondly, the United Arab Republic Government are paying to Her Majesty's Government a lump sum of £27½ million in compensation for British private property that has been Egyptianised, that is to say, nationalised or compulsorily acquired. This sum is also on account of that part of the property to be returned which may have suffered injury or damage. On the basis of the claimed values the sequestrated property which is being returned is worth more than twice the property which has been Egyptianised. £3½ million of this sum of £27½ million is being paid today, the balance is due in a year's time, and, meanwhile, Her Majesty Government will hold in London British Government stocks deposited by the Government of the United Arab Republic as collateral security to the value of £25 million.
Thirdly, provision is made for the resumption of full payment and transfer by the United Arab Republic of Egyptian Government pensions to United Kingdom nationals, together with all arrears. In addition, the Government of the United Arab Republic are paying to Her Majesty's Government the sum of £100,000 sterling as an interim payment in respect of compensation due to British officials dismissed in 1951—as hon. Members will be aware, a sum of this order has already been advanced by Her Majesty's Government to the officials concerned—and is reactivating the Commission dealing with the case of these officials to make a final assessment of the compensation due and permit the payment of the balance thereof in sterling.
Fourthly, provision is made for owners not wishing to take up residence in Egypt

to have remitted to them in the United Kingdom, subject to the normal requirements of the Egyptian Exchange Control Regulations, at least £E5,000 from any cash or bank balances which are released to them following desequestration, or the proceeds of the sale of any of their property in Egypt.
Fifthly, the balances at present held by Egypt in this country in blocked accounts have been released from Exchange Control restriction.
Sixthly, provision is made for the resumption of normal commercial relationships, including aviation.
In addition, the agreement reached provisionally on 22nd December between the Egyptian authorities and the Anglo-Egyptian Oil Company and the Shell Company of Egypt now comes into force. This will enable the companies to resume business in Egypt on a basis acceptable to them.
The Agreement is not concerned with inter-Government claims the validity of which is not admitted on either side. The two Governments have, however, agreed in a simultaneous exchange of notes to a mutual waiver of such claims.
It is necessary for the proper implementation of the Agreement that we should have a United Kingdom representative in Cairo with adequate staff. The Government of the United Arab Republic have agreed to receive such a representative, who will be accorded diplomatic immunities and facilities.
The office of the United Kingdom representative in Cairo, working in conjunction with the British Properties in Egypt section of the Foreign Office already established in London to register the property of United Kingdom nationals in Egypt, will be ready to help and advise the owners over the resumption of possession of their property and in claiming due compensation. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary is sending today to each owner who has registered his property with the section a letter explaining the procedure to be followed. This letter will be published in the Press, and I understand that copies are available now in the Library. Before making arrangements to return to Egypt to resume possession of their property, owners are advised to consult this section of the Foreign Office in advance.
Distribution of the £27½ million will be entrusted to the Foreign Compensation Commission in accordance with the provisions of Orders in Council, the first of which is now being prepared. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary will be laying this Order before the House as soon as possible. The Commission was set up by the Foreign Compensation Act, 1950, to determine claims for compensation and distribute payments received by Her Majesty's Government from foreign Governments. The Chairman of the Commission is Mr. Montgomery White, Q.C.
After the initialing of the Agreement, scrutiny of the detailed lists provided in Cairo by the United Arab Republic Government revealed the possibility of misunderstandings over its interpretation. In the light of the explanation which has now been received and embodied in an exchange of letters the Agreement has been signed.
The full text of the Agreement and the Exchange of Notes is being published as a White Paper, which is now available at the Vote Office. It is a comprehensive Agreement on a wide range of financial matters that have been in dispute between the two countries, some of them for a long time. Taken as a whole, the Agreement provides a reasonable and practical settlement.
Finally, I should like to record my own thanks and the thanks of Her Majesty's Government to Mr. Eugene Black, President of the International Bank. He agreed, at the request of the two Governments, to use his good offices on a personal and informal basis, and his efforts were the key to the settlement that has now been reached.

Mr. H. Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we on this side of the House, at any rate, welcome the prospect of a resumption of more normal trading and financial relationship with Egypt after all the lunacies of the last two and a half years? I am sure that the whole House will welcome the fact that these somewhat humiliating negotiations have now reached an end.
I should like to ask the Chancellor two specific questions. First, will he not now admit frankly to the House that the mutual waiver of inter-Governmental claims means, in effect, that Her

Majesty's Government have abandoned a claim worth £50 million or more for installations and military stores taken over in the Suez base in return for the waiver by the Egyptian Government of their claim for reparations for damage caused by the invasion just over two years ago?
Secondly, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, on the details so far published, there is very serious concern in many parts of the country about the arrangements being made for compensation in respect of private property? Is he further aware that not only this side of the House, but I am sure the whole House, will want to scrutinise very carefully that provision and ask for further discussion on it at an early date?

Mr. Amory: The right hon. Gentleman will not expect me to agree with the rather immoderate words that he used, words with which most people in this country would not agree.
Coming to his specific questions, I certainly would not agree that the negotiations had been humiliating. Neither party has secured as much as it desired, but I have no doubt whatever that both parties were losing by the deadlock and that both parties stand to gain by the settlement.
It is not to be assumed that the lump sum payment, if that is what the right hon. Gentleman is referring to, will prove inadequate. In any case, the lump sum payment is by no means the largest gain by the United Kingdom. The largest gains are the return of a very large amount of private property and a resumption of trade.

Mr. Wilson: Would the Chancellor now answer my other question, to which, I think, the whole House would attach importance? Is it a fact that we have given away installations worth £50 million or more in return for a promise by the Egyptians that they will not press their claim for reparations?

Mr. Amory: If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the Agreement he will see that these two claims—in regard to neither of which was there any chance of settlement between the two countries—have, by mutual agreement, been laid aside. But I would not for a moment agree that a value should be placed on the base of


something over £60 million, which was the value given by, I think, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War, some time ago, as the value of the contents of the base at cost or realisable value on an open market. When there is only one possible user, it is quite impossible to set any value on an installation of that kind.

Dame Florence Horsbrugh: Can my right hon. Friend say whether, if any claimant wishes to go to Egypt but cannot afford to do so, he will be given financial assistance? And if he cannot go, and has to pay for agents in Egypt to look after his property, will he have financial assistance there?

Mr. Amory: I think that the Government will wish to give sympathetic consideration to any of the claimants who, for reasons of financial hardship, would find it difficult to meet the expense of paying a necessary visit to Egypt; or in the matter of agents' expenses. The precise question of contributions will, I think, have to await a further stage in the consideration.

Mr. Bevan: In view of the recent statement by the Prime Minister, is the Chancellor aware that for some time—in fact, since 1956—we have been aware of the immediacy of the Government's action? Now, we have been told about its effectiveness. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House what is the difference between the sum of the claims put in by people who have suffered losses and the sum that is now to be available, so that we shall know what the disparity is, if any, between the two?
Further, following on the question of the right hon. Lady the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh), will the Chancellor inform the House of the facilities that are to be made available to small people who have lost property, and who cannot make use of machinery to make the claim?

Mr. Amory: It is very hard to be precise, because the only figure we have for the claims is the value that the owners themselves attach to their claims. When it comes to an owner assessing the value of his own property, I think that owners are very often apt to take a somewhat rosy view. I should say that the value of the property to be desequestrated—the claimed value—is well over £100 million;

probably about £130 million. The value of the Egyptianised, or nationalised, pro-parties is about £45 million for business property. For land, it is a few millions more, but it is impossible to be precise until we can see how the formula that has been agreed for the treatment of land can be applied to individual claims.

Mr. Grimond: As one of the reasons given by Her Majesty's Government for this expedition was the protection of British property in Egypt, may we take it that even if the Government feel that the individual claims are, perhaps, rather more than is justified, the Government themselves will make up the difference between the sum offered by the Egyptians and that which was finally agreed was lost by the individuals?

Mr. Amory: No. The Government have always made it clear that they cannot accept a commitment for paying compensation in oases of this kind, where damage is suffered to private property in foreign countries.

Major Legge-Bourke: In view of what my right hon. Friend has said about the difference in the estimated value of the Egyptianised property and the £27½ million, will he now take steps to see that some compensation is provided by Her Majesty's Government for those people, to make up the deficiency? May I add that I really do not think that that wisecrack about evaluation by owners was worthy of him?

Mr. Amory: I do not think that my hon. and gallant Friend can have heard the reply I gave a moment or two ago to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), when I said that neither Her Majesty's Government, nor any previous Government of this country, has ever accepted a commitment to pay compensation in such circumstances where losses have been incurred. One point that I should like my hon. and gallant Friend to remember in connection with that lump-sum payment is that claims will be paid out of it in sterling, and not in Egyptian currency, in which their claims would otherwise have had to be met.

Mr. Bevan: While it is generally accepted that it is quite impossible for a Government to accept responsibility for payment of compensation for loss of the property of British nationals abroad arising out of military action, is it not a fact


that this is a peculiar case? In most instances, there is some kind of warning—some negotiations have taken place, some kind of tension has arisen, some sort of apprehension has been caused—and people can take action to protect themselves. In this case, it was a lunatic action out of the blue. Nobody could have taken any action at all to protect himself. Would it not, therefore, be desirable that as those who support the Government in this country are largely drawn from the propertied classes a capital levy should be levied to compensate those who have suffered from their behaviour?

Mr. Amory: I do not think that I can accept the right hon. Gentleman's last suggestion.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the country will hear with the greatest anxiety that whereas the total of the claims put in by reputable persons in business amount to £45 million, the Government have been able to secure from Egypt only £27½ million? Is that the Government's last word in the matter? Will they not reconsider the possibility, in this particular and special case, of discharging, in part, the difference between those two sums?

Mr. Amory: I have already said that I think it premature to say, at present, how the substantiated claims will compare with the sum available. It will be for the Foreign Compensation Commission to receive those claims, and to adjudicate upon them.

Mr. Chetwynd: Can the Chancellor tell the House the total cost of the campaign—in military expenditure, loss of trade and loss of compensation?

Mr. Amory: I could not make a shot at that.

Mr. W. Yates: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the majority of fair-minded people, both those who have put in their claims, and businessmen, will accept and thank him for his work in obtaining this Agreement? Is he also aware that the Agreement would be very much better if he would ask his right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary to consider asking for the immediate release from gaol of Mr. Swinburn and Mr. Zarb?

Mr. Amory: I have no doubt whatever that, in its totality, this Agreement is of advantage to the United Kingdom, and that it was a good thing to have it signed.
The second part of my hon. Friend's question is a matter more for my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary than for me.

Mr. Gaitskell: Will the Chancellor, in consultation with the Leader of the House, arrange for an early debate—in Government time—on this Agreement and its implications? In anticipation of that, could he provide us now with the figure for the net total loss of the Suez adventure?

Mr. Amory: I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend has heard the first part of the right hon. Gentleman's question. The answer to the second part would be quite outside the terms of the financial Agreement that I am explaining to the House today.

FEDERATION OF RHODESIA AND NYASALAND (HON. MEMBER FOR WEDNESBURY)

The Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. C. J. M. Alport): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the visit of the hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
As a result of information reaching my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to the effect that the hon. Member for Wednesbury had been or was to be declared a prohibited immigrant to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, I asked the United Kingdom High Commissioner in Salisbury to make immediate inquiries.
The legal position is as follows. Law and order is a territorial subject, but only in so far as it does not impinge upon any of the matters specifically allocated in the Constitution to the Federation. Under the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Constitution) Order in Council, 1953, the Federal Legislature is given by paragraph 29 of that Order power—and here I quote—
To make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Federation with respect to any matter included in the second schedule to


the Constitution. One of the matters included in the schedule is immigration into and emigration from the Federation.
The Federation is solely responsible for the law dealing with immigration. The Federation is under no duty to consult Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom with regard to such law and Her Majesty's Government have no powers with regard to the operation of a law made within the powers of the Federal Legislature.
The High Commissioner has informed us that the hon. Member for Wednesbury refused to accept service of an order declaring him a prohibited immigrant and that notice was accordingly given to him orally. He has or had a right of appealing against this within 24 hours. I have no information as to whether he exercised this right, but I understand that he is being permitted by the Federal authorities to conclude his tour of Northern Rhodesia.

Mr. Bottomley: This matter concerns an hon. Member of this House who is on a tour of a British-protected territory. It is, indeed, a serious matter to restrict the freedom of any Member of the House, whether in the United Kingdom or in a Colony for which this House is responsible. May I ask the Under-Secretary whether his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies made representations to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, and whether he made a protest on behalf of hon. Members of this House?

Mr. Alport: So far as the right hon. Gentleman's supplementary question affects the question of privilege, that is not, of course, a matter for me. As to representations, the Federal Government have agreed that the hon. Member for Wednesbury should complete his tour of Northern Rhodesia as he has done in Southern Rhodesia. Since my noble Friend the Minister of State for the Colonies will not be visiting Nyasaland at present, it would not be practicable for the hon. Member to do so. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] As I have said, we have no information on whether the hon. Member has exercised his right of appeal, but I should stress that the Federal Government have acted in this matter strictly within their constitutional powers.

Mr. Callaghan: Are we to take it from the reply, first, that we have heard that the Federal Government did not even consult Her Majesty's Government before they issued this order? Secondly, does the Under-Secretary agree that this is a matter of immigration? So far as I know, my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) has no intention of settling in the Federation. Is this not a matter of passport control, which is specifically reserved to the Nyasaland Government? Is not my hon. Friend, in fact, going to Nyasaland to stay with the Governor of that territory and, therefore, is he not responsible for my hon. Friend's safety and for passport control?
Finally, have we really got to the stage where an hon. Member of this House can be denied permission to visit a British Protectorate without as much as a squeak of protest from the Under-Secretary?

Mr. Alport: The hon. Gentleman is wrong in assuming that this is merely a question of passport control. It has been said quite specifically and clearly in the Constitution that the Federal Government have power with regard to immigration, which is going into, and emigration, which is going out of, a territory. There is no disagreement, so far as I know, between the Federal Government and the territorial Governments on that score.
As to the entry of the hon. Member for Wednesbury into Nyasaland, I have already said that, in view of the fact that my noble Friend the Minister of State is not going to Nyasaland, it would not be appropriate at present for the hon. Gentleman to go.

Mr. Wall: While expressing profound disagreement with the political views and distaste at the manners and lack of tact of the hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse), may I ask my hon. Friend whether it is not the right of every Member of this House to visit territories of the dependent Commonwealth provided that he does not break the law? Has the hon. Member broken the law or not?

Mr. Alport: In this case the law concerned is not the law of the United Kingdom, but the law of the Federation. It is a matter for the Federal Government to decide. Once the the Parliament of the United Kingdom devolves powers upon a Government overseas it cannot lightly


interfere with that, nor obtain the return of those powers to itself at its wish.

Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury is, in the view of this Government, rightly expelled from a British Protectorate because, under the Constitution of the Central African Federation, power to deal with emigration from the Federation is in the hands of the central Government.
I wish to ask two specific questions. First, does the hon. Gentleman realise that that interpretation of the words "emigration from the Federation" is a startling interpretation? Has he obtained the advice of the Attorney-General upon this? Is that his view of the words, "emigration from the Federation"? Secondly, does the hon. Gentleman realise the extremely far-reaching nature of the interpretation which he has put upon the words, "emigration from the Federation"? Does he realise that the result of the interpretation which he has adopted means that the Central African Federation has a right of veto on anybody whom this country sends into a British Protectorate for the purpose of carrying out the duties of this country in connection with that Protectorate and for the purpose of carrying out the responsibilities which this House has towards that Protectorate?
Does not the hon. Gentleman recognise that if that interpretation had been put before this House when the Federation of Nyasaland Order in Council was before the House it would never have passed the House? If this is the interpretation on which the Government stand, the sooner they bring in an amendment to this Order in Council the better.

Mr. Alport: I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman is confusing two different situations. In this case, the hon. Member for Wednesbury was on a private visit to the Federation.
As to the scope of immigration and emigration, it is quite clear, as far as I am advised, that the powers that this provides under the Constitution for the Federal Government give them control over movement into the Federation and movement out of the Federation. So far as I know, that was clear at the time when the Order in Council was laid and debated in this House.

Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: Will the Under-Secretary now say whether, in fact, he has been advised by the Attorney-General that the words "emigration from the Federation" cover the deportation of the hon. Member for Wednesbury and whether that advice was given before the consultation which is taking place at this very moment between the Under-Secretary and the Attorney-General?

The Attorney-General (Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller): The hon. and learned Gentleman seems to be attaching undue weight to the word "emigration". The question here is one of immigration, and I have certainly advised that it is immigration into and emigration from. The question at issue here is "immigration into". I have certainly advised—and I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman, when he has considered the matter fully, will agree—that under the Constitution the Federal Legislature has power to deal with all questions of immigration into the Federation.

Lieut.-Commander Maydon: Is it not well known both inside this House and outside it that visitors to other countries, and particularly if they happen to be Members of this House, should refrain from making statements which are objectionable to the Governments of their host countries?

Mr. J. Johnson: Is the Under-Secretary quite sure of his own facts here, because, if so, they are at variance with what Sir Roy Welensky has said? Is he aware that I was in exactly the same position two years ago this month, when the Mayor of Salisbury, Alderman Olley, wished to have me barred from going into Southern Rhodesia, and Sir Roy Welensky went on record publicly in the Sunday Press of Salisbury as saying, first, that he had no power to bar me, and, secondly, that if he had he would not do so?

Mr. Alport: I cannot be responsible for the views, or, rather, the interpretation, put forward by a Commonwealth Prime Minister with regard to the powers and rights of his own Government. All I am clear about is that, in this particular circumstance, the Federal Government are acting within the powers devolved upon them by this Parliament.

Mr. J. Griffiths: May I ask the hon. Gentleman and the Leader of the House


why, since this is a matter concerning Members of Parliament in a Protectorate for which the ultimate responsibility rests with Her Majesty's Government and this Parliament, the statement has not been made by the Secretary of State for the Colonies? This is a constitutional question of great importance, but the Under-Secretary is not responsible, nor is his noble Friend the Minister of State for the Colonies, for the Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in this House of Commons. It is the Secretary of State for the Colonies who is responsible, and I therefore ask that question first.
May I now ask two other questions? First, my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury is at the moment in Northern Rhodesia. Have representations been made by the Governor of Northern Rhodesia that he should be asked to leave the territory? All that we have heard is that the Federal Government have intervened. Why does the hon. Gentleman think that it would be inopportune for any Member of Parliament to go to the territory because the Minister of State is not going there? In our view, it is very unfortunate that the Minister of State is not going there, because we believe that the presence in Central Africa of hon. Members from this House at this time would go some way to reassuring the Africans on the dangers which they fear.
Finally, may I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he will convey to all European leaders in Central Africa that the panic which they are showing over this minor difficulty shows how completely untrustworthy they are to have responsibility and leadership?

Mr. Alport: If I may say so with respect, I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman can really have meant the last sentence he uttered.
May I say that whereas it may be the view of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite that the decision to cancel or postpone the Minister of State's visit was wrong, that is not the view of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman may speak for his own party, but we believe that this decision was right and proper in the circumstances.
Secondly, the consultations that may have taken place between the Governor of Northern Rhodesia and the Federal Government is a matter for the two

Governments, but there is no doubt that the Government of Northern Rhodesia were fully informed of the circumstances of the Federal Government's decision.
On the right hon. Gentleman's other point, I can only repeat to the right hon. Gentleman that when a power has been devolved by this House upon an overseas Government it is not right that this House should try to recover that power at a subsequent date, at its will.

Mr. F. M. Bennett: However much pique may be caused no individual feelings of prestige, and irrespective of any views which the hon. Member for Wednesbury has expressed, is it not a fact that the law is that Members of Parliament are in no different position, legally, from any other visitors going into that territory? So far as the law on this particular case is concerned, and the amount of the discretion which has been devolved, as the Minister has said, to the Federation, surely the position is no different from that of emigration to any other country, such as in the case of Mr. Christopher Shawcross being sent out of Ghana?

Mr. Callaghan: There are reserved, as the Under-Secretary knows, in the Appendix to the Federal Constitution, a number of subjects, one of which is emigration and immigration. Is it not a fact that the Governor of Nyasaland had already said, long before this happened, that the question of passport control was a matter that was reserved to the Government of Nyasaland, and that this is a matter for the Secretary of State for the Colonies?
May I ask the hon. Gentleman again what the words "passport control" mean in this context? Is it not a matter for the Governor of Nyasaland as to whether my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury is admitted to that territory or not? If that is not so, is it not a fact that the words "passport control" have no meaning whatever?

Mr. Alport: The hon. Member perhaps has not realised that there is this fundamental distinction—that the control of passport issues concerns movement out of a territory. In this case, the point at issue is movement into the territory and that the hon. Member for Wednesbury is being declared, or is being threatened with being declared, a prohibited immigrant. Therefore, there is no analogy between the


power used by the Federal Government in this case and the powers remaining with the territorial Governments with regard to the issue of passports for British-protected persons moving from the Federation outside.

Mr. Bevan: May I raise a point of rather wider significance than this? There has been a great deal of argument about the rights of the Governments concerned to take the action which they have taken, and there may be some ambiguity about that. But is there any ambiguity about its undesirability? Her Majesty's Government have not expressed a single view about it.
I am sure that on both sides of the House we are very deeply concerned about the bonds that link the members of the Commonwealth together. Would it not be extremely undesirable, if the practice started, for one part of the Commonwealth to exclude hon. Members of this House on the grounds of political undesirability? Would not that do very serious damage indeed to the future of the Commonwealth? Ought not Her Majesty's Government to have expressed some concern about the step which has been taken, which—and I use the phrase advisedly—may do great spiritual damage to the relations between members of the Commonwealth?

Mr. Alport: I am sure that neither the Government here nor the Government of the Federation are under any illusions as to the seriousness of this action. There has been very good evidence given to the House this afternoon as to the reluctance of the Federal Government to take action of this sort, in view of what was said by Sir Roy Welensky about the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) two years ago.

Mr. Bevan: Will the hon. Member give the House the evidence of this reluctance? Was either the Colonial Office or the Commonwealth Relations Office informed about the intention to prevent my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury from visiting Nyasaland? If not, why not? Have they not made representations themselves to the effect that they do not consider this to be a code of conduct which was desirable to cement the bonds of the Commonwealth?

Mr. Alport: I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman heard the end of my reply. I called in the evidence given us this afternoon by the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson), when he drew attention to the fact that, when there was a public outcry to take some action against him, the Prime Minister of the Federation gave special reasons for his reluctance to do so.

Major Legge-Bourke: On a point of order. I wonder whether I might put this to you, Mr. Speaker. It is reported this morning that the hon. Member for Wednesbury has said that he does not intend to recognise the authority of the Federation Prohibition Order against a British Member of Parliament in a territory for which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies is directly responsible.
May I put it to you, Sir, that as I read it, page 79 of the sixteenth edition of Erskine May makes it abundantly clear that whether it is a case of a British Member of Parliament or not has no relevance whatever, and that when an hon. Member goes out from this House in a private capacity he is, in fact, in exactly the same position as any other citizen?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order. If I can help the House, I will tell the hon. and gallant Member my opinion.
In general, the position is that if an hon. Member goes of his own accord into another jurisdiction that is not the concern of the House. I have tried to look at the matter, from what I have read about it in the Press this morning, in relation to the possible outcome of a question of Privilege, but, of course, Privilege belongs to the House and not to the individual Member; he does not carry it about with him wherever he goes. Privileges generally are concerned with seeing that an hon. Member has free access to this place and free speech when he is here. I know of nothing that has been done against that.
The real position, as I see it, is that if the House had sent the hon. Member for Wednesbury on its own business to Salisbury, Northern Rhodesia, or wherever it may be, then any refusal to facilitate his progress by the authorities there might have been regarded by the


House, in certain circumstances, as approaching a contempt of the House because he was a delegate of the House. The facts in this case are that the hon. Member has undertaken the journey upon his own volition and with no authority from the House. I really do not see any way in which the hon. Member, as a Member of Parliament, on his journey, can be considered as being different from any other British citizen.
I think that the House is naturally concerned, and I thought, when the question of a Private Notice Question came before me, that the House has a right to look into a case of a British citizen who, it may think, is wrongfully treated—but only as a British subject, not as a Member of Parliament.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I should like to say at once that we do not, for a single moment, claim that a British Member of Parliament has any more rights than any other British subject. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] No, we do not. But the point here is that this is a British Protectorate which is essentially in a fundamentally different position from that of a Colony. The position is that the Federal Constitution, in its first Article, says that these territories—Northern Rhodesia, where the hon. Member for Wednesbury is at this moment, as far as we know, and Nyasaland, where he proposes to go—are to remain under the special protection of Her Majesty. They are territories, therefore, for which the Government are responsible and in regard to which Members of Parliament have a responsibility. That is what I wish to say on the point of order, but I did wish, also, to make it quite clear that we do not raise the question of any special privilege for Members of Parliament; it applies to any British subject.
May I now ask the Under-Secretary again two questions to which he did not reply?

Mr. Speaker: Let us finish the point of order. I am glad that I have been able to assist the House in the matter on the question of status. I believe it to be absolutely accurate that an hon. Member in the position of the hon. Member for Wednesbury is entitled to protection as a British subject, but to nothing else.

Mr. Bowles: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. While we all agree with your Ruling about hon. Members of this House, it is quite clear that the Minister of State, Lord Perth, has been prevented from going to this territory, also. He was to go on Government business. May I ask whether, although we cannot protect him, the Government will explain why Lord Perth has been prevented from going, and by whom?

Mr. Alport: That is a decision of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Speaker: With respect to the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Bowles), I do not think that that is at all the same case. I gather that Lord Perth and his colleagues in the Government do not think that it is advisable for him to go there. That is quite different from the position of the hon. Member for Wednesbury.

Mr. Parker: Surely, Mr. Speaker, if the House and the Government have some responsibility for territories within the Central African Federation, a Member of the House is entitled to go there to find out what is happening and whether the authorities are carrying out their job.

Mr. Speaker: If he goes there and places himself under that jurisdiction, he enjoys no privilege apart from that of the ordinary British citizen.

Mr. Brockway: I ask leave, Mr. Speaker. to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the notice given to a British subject, the hon. Member for Wednesbury, that he is a prohibited immigrant in the British Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia and the decision not to permit him to visit Nyasaland when he is carrying out a Parliamentary duty of investigating native affairs in territories for which this House is responsible.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I must deal with this submission first.
The hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) asks permission to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a matter of urgent public importance, namely, the notice given to a


British subject, the hon. Member for Wednesbury, that he is a prohibited immigrant in the British Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia and the decision not to permit him to visit Nyasaland when he is carrying out a Parliamentary duty of investigating native affairs in territories for which this House is responsible.
According to what I have heard, all that has happened to the hon. Member for Wednesbury is that he has been served with a notice saying that he is a prohibited immigrant. I have heard no allegation which goes further than that. Apart from that, nothing appears to have happened to him. The statement just now made by the Under-Secretary of State indicates that the question of immigration, which, I must take it, includes saying whether a man is a prohibited immigrant or not, is the sole responsibility of the Federal Government who have served this notice upon the hon. Member. I cannot find that this Motion comes within the Standing Order.
Quite apart from the question of urgency, nothing having happened to the hon. Member, I think that really to remedy this, if it be a grievance, would involve some alteration in the law, as was suggested by the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, North-East (Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas) when he said that the control over immigration should be amended. But, of course, that is a subject which would require legislation and, quite clearly, is not the sort of thing we could take on the Adjournment, whether under Standing Order No. 9 or on the ordinary Adjournment of the House. For those reasons, I am forced to the conclusion that this is not a Motion which I can agree is proper under the Standing Order.

Mr. Brockway: May I put this point to you, Mr. Speaker? You have said that nothing more has happened to the hon. Member for Wednesbury except that he has received notice that he is a prohibited immigrant. We have heard from the Government Front Bench today that he is not to be permitted to go from one British Protectorate, Northern Rhodesia, to another British Protectorate, Nyasaland. I submit to you, Sir, that that is a matter for which the Government

of this country and this House have some responsibility.

Mr. Paget: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Surely, although it is said that the question of immigration and emigration into and from the Federation is a matter of Federal law, nothing of that sort arises with regard to a movement within the Federation. This is a movement from Northern Rhodesia, a British Protectorate, to Nyasaland, a British Protectorate, by a man who is already there. That cannot be a question of immigration into the Protectorate, which is what the Attorney-General advised us about.

Mr. J. Johnson: This is a matter of movement within the Federation, say, between Lusaka and Blantyre. There are precedents in this matter, for Harry Nkumbula, President of the Northern Rhodesia Congress, was not allowed to leave Northern Rhodesia to go to Nyasaland, and, conversely, Joseph Sangala, the President of the Nyasaland Congress, to leave Nyasaland to go to Northern Rhodesia. It is entirely a matter for internal executive authority on the part of the Governors themselves and their two Protectorate Governors, not Federation jurisdiction.

Mr. Callaghan: I ask leave, Mr. Speaker, to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, to discuss a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the refusal of Her Majesty's Government to assure the freedom of an hon. Member of this House to visit a British Protectorate for which Her Majesty's Government and this Parliament are responsible, and Her Majesty's Government's failure to protest to the Federal Government about their action in issuing an order against the hon. Member for Wednesbury.
May I say, in continuation of this point, that it is clearly definite. It is obviously urgent because the hon. Member is due to leave for Nyasaland tomorrow. I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that it is obviously of the greatest public importance—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] This is not a party matter. It ought to be a matter for the whole House.
I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that, whatever the law may be, it is surely high time that it was corrected and put


right, if it is the case that someone not responsible to the House of Commons can order a British subject and, in addition to being a British subject, a Member of this House, to leave a British Colony. For those reasons, I ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, in order to ask that the British Government should protest about the action of the Federal Government in this matter.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 to call attention to a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the refusal of Her Majesty's Government to assure the freedom of an hon. Member of this House to visit a British Protectorate for which Her Majesty's Government and this Parliament are responsible, and Her Majesty's Government's failure to protest to the Federal Government about their action in issuing an order against the hon. Member for Wednesbury.
I think that this, also, comes up against the same difficulty, namely, that the question of emigration is one for the Federal Government. The hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) and other hon. Members said that this was a question not of immigration into a Federal territory as such, but of movement between different parts of the territory. I see the point of that, but, on the other hand, assuming that the Government of the Federation have the power to declare a man a prohibited immigrant, that would mean that he has no business, in that Government's view, inside the whole Federation. That being so, it seems to me that responsibility for this action rests with the Federal Government. That is the first point.
I also do not think that I can assume that there has been any failure to protest in the events as they have come before us to this date. Further, the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) himself, in asking leave to move the Motion, said that if the Government of the Federation could keep out a British citizen it was high time that the law was changed. It seems to me that that is the remedy. But if it is the remedy for the grievance, it is legislation and, therefore, the Motion would not be appropriate.

Mr. Callaghan: May I ask you, Mr. Speaker, not to hang too much of your

Ruling upon a statement which I made in passing. What is quite clear is that the law here is in dispute. Although the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Attorney-General accept one view, that does not mean to say that it is universally accepted. What I was saying was that if your view was right the law should be changed. Speaking for myself and from such advice as I have been able to get, it seems to me that as the matter of passport control is the responsibility of the Governor there is a responsibility here, and a change in the law is not needed to enable a Member of this House to visit the Protectorate of Nyasaland.

Mr. Speaker: I assure the hon. Member that I was not hanging too much on what he said. I mentioned it because it happens to agree with my own view of the matter, namely, that the grievance is against the state of the law which puts the discretion in the hands of the Federal Government. I agree with the hon. Member when he says that about the matter. That is why I do not think that it can be raised under the Standing Order.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: On a point of order. Would it not clarify the situation for the whole House in this important matter if the Under-Secretary of State could tell us whether he knows for what purpose the hon. Member for Wednesbury has gone to Northern Rhodesia in the middle of the Session and, also, whether he could say who are sponsoring his visit?

Mr. Speaker: That would not be proper at all. We should hear the hon. Member for Wednesbury himself on that point.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I should like to take the House into my confidence. I have considered the matter very carefully and ask for the support of the House. I do not think that this is a proper subject to raise under Standing Order No. 9 on the facts as they stand. I fear that were I to allow this it would be a bad precedent for the future, possibly leading to all sorts of mischievous consequences. I therefore cannot change my mind.

Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas: We on this side are concerned that it will lead to


all kinds of mischievous consequences if you, Mr. Speaker, do not allow us to have a debate on the matter. On the primary point which you made, namely, that the Government of Rhodesia and Nyasaland were taking the view, as does this Government apparently, that this matter comes within the words "immigration into and emigration from the Federation within what is allocated to the Central African Federation for decision", we on this side simply do not accept that interpretation.
We believe that this is a matter which, to put it at its lowest, is subject to differences of view. It is, therefore, a matter which should be discussed by this House with a view to seeing what action the Government and this House should take in the light of their decision. The matter is not concluded merely by saying that this Government or the Government of Rhodesia and Nyasaland take the view that it is a Rhodesia and Nyasaland affair.

Mr. Speaker: I think that we are jumping before we come to the stile. I am not in any sense saying that the House should not debate the matter, but it is not subject to debate in the way proposed.
The hon. and learned Member for Leicester, North-East (Sir L. Ungoed-Thomas) has said that there are two different views about the law. I have taken the view which the Government have taken, and I have no grounds that I know of for denying that view. If there is to be an argument about it, that is not something which can be discussed under Standing Order No. 9, which deals with a practical event or happening which one can get hold of and understand. Standing Order No. 9 is not a vehicle for discussing questions of law.

Mr. J. Hynd: May I ask your guidance on the Ruling which you have given, Mr. Speaker? I understand that your Ruling is based generally on the point that the Government are not responsible for the law applying to immigration and emigration within this territory and that because of that a Motion under Standing Order No. 9 is out of order. Are we to understand that a Motion under Standing Order No. 9 must be out of order if it concerns a matter in which the British Government have not direct responsibility?
We have only this afternoon been discussing an agreement about the rights and property of British subjects in Egypt, where the Government certainly had no authority, but where they have taken action on behalf of British individuals, and have come to an agreement with the Egyptian Government. Is it not the case that, similarly in this sort of issue, our Government can make representations to the Federal Government, even though our Government have no direct responsibility?

Mr. Speaker: I would point out one thing in connection with the statement, which I should have mentioned earlier, namely, that the hon. Member for Wednesbury has the right of appeal against this decision. We do not know whether or not he has exercised it. Apparently the law in that part of the world is that if a man is declared to be a prohibited immigrant he has the right of appeal within a certain time. We do not know whether the hon. Member has appealed yet. I do not think that the House can interfere until that period is exhausted.

Mr. Leather: This is not a point of order. May I ask—

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member does not use the magic formula.

Mr. Leather: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I can deal only with points of order.

Mr. Grimond: I appreciate that the most serious aspect of the matter is that so much of Africa is under emergency regulations, but surely this is a specific instance of an hon. Member being denied access to Nyasaland, first, because he is a Member of Parliament. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] As I understand, the Under-Secretary bracketed the hon. Member with the Minister of State, for the same reasons. Secondly, I understood the Under-Secretary to say that it was unthinkable that the hon. Member for Wednesbury should be allowed to go to Nyasaland, as though the Under-Secretary was taking some responsibility for the decision.

Mr. Alport: The order made against the hon. Member for Wednesbury applies to the whole Federation. It applies


equally to Southern Rhodesia as to Nyasaland or Northern Rhodesia. In the case of Northern Rhodesia, the Federal Government have agreed that the hon. Member should continue and complete his tour, and he has already completed his tour of Southern Rhodesia. The order applies not to Nyasaland alone but to the whole Federation.

Mr. Bevan: Is it not a fact that you, Mr. Speaker, put the House in a very considerable difficulty if, in giving your Ruling Under Standing Order No. 9, you take the Government's view of the interpretation of the law? In my respectful submission, that seems practically to finish Standing Order No. 9. If the Government are supported in their view by the formidable armament of the Attorney-General, who says that in his view this is the law and you, Mr. Speaker, say that you agree that it is the law, we are finished.

Mr. Speaker: In self-defence, I would say that I am not quite so helpless as that. In ordinary matters of law I can form my own opinion fairly well, and I do not take my views from anybody. But if the right hon. Gentleman will do as I have tried to do in a short time this morning, go through the documents which comprise the Constitution of the Federal Government and all the constituent territorial Governments, he will see that they are not very easy to understand. But I came to the same conclusion as Her Majesty's Government quite independently, that under the Constitution as framed this is the responsibility of the Federal Government.

Mr. Bevan: Certain obligations rest upon this House. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) made the point, which I wish to underline, that in this matter a Member of Parliament is in a different position from that of an ordinary person. Before very long the Government of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland will be applying to this House for the endowment of further powers. In other words, certain residual powers are still possessed by Parliament in respect of this area. There is, therefore, an obligation on the part of Members of this House who are able to avail themselves of the opportunity to find out what is happening there now, so as

to be able to decide later whether those powers should be enlarged or reduced. An hon. Member is, therefore, in an entirely different position from that of the ordinary subject.
The urgency of the matter resides in the fact that if the news goes out to the people of Nyasaland that although—[Interruption.] I hope that hon. Members opposite will regard this matter as slightly more serious than they appear to be doing. I suppose they want more bloodshed there before they can make up their minds. If the news were to go out that Members of Parliament who still have obligations to the people there, who have not relinquished all their rights to the Government of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland—[Interruption.] In my respectful submission it is a matter of extreme urgency that they should know that we still protect them, and a very grave responsibility rests upon the troglodytes opposite to convey to the people of Nyasaland that they can look for no protection from this House, and for no opportunity of ventilating their grievances.

Sir P. Spens: Is it not a fact that the hon. Member for Wednesbury happens to be inside the jurisdiction of the Federation; that the Federation has been given certain powers by this House; that the Federation claims the right of exercising those powers; and that it is never in order, after this House has delegated powers of a self-governing part of the Commonwealth, to discuss in this House the exercise by them of the powers which we have given them; that the hon. Member for Wednesbury has the right of appeal to the Federal Court of the Federation, and that it is that Court which should decide what his rights are?

Mr. Speaker: That is the view that I take of the matter. That being so, I have to consider the Orders of the Day. We have had a long discussion on this matter and I must give it as my final decision, on the particular circumstances related to me, that it is my duty to say that this is not a matter which falls under Standing Order No. 9.
There are other opportunities, if the House wishes to discuss it, to arrange for a debate in which the whole matter can be gone into free from the trammels which beset a question so hedged about with


legislation and legal differences and difficulties as this is. It is no longer a definite matter, owing to the conflicting legal accounts that we have had. I must, therefore, say that this is not a matter falling under Standing Order No. 9.

Mr. Gaitskell: You have referred to other opportunities of raising this matter, Mr. Speaker, although, as you say, we have had a long discussion on whether the Adjournment could be moved under Standing Order No. 9. We must accept your decision on the matter, but I hope that you will agree—as, I hope, the whole House will—that this is a very serious matter, which involves points of legal complexity on which there is disagreement, as well as points of conduct by Governments.
With your permission, I would, therefore, ask the Leader of the House whether he will find a very early day upon which we can debate the whole matter which has arisen.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department and Lord Privy Seal (Mr. R. A. Butler): It was quite clear to me before the House met today that this was obviously a matter of first-class importance to the House of Commons. I do not wish to use any language which in any way derogates from any of the answers given by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, nor, Mr. Speaker, do I wish to say anything to alter any of your Rulings, which I entirely accept, but as to the possibility of debating this in what we can describe as a more orderly and rational atmosphere—although one cannot complain at this—I think that the only thing we can do is to discuss it through the usual channels, but I must remind the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends that there is no question why time should not be found by the Opposition. If we enter discussions we must do so on a completely open basis, with that in mind.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Proceedings of the Committee on Colonial Development and Welfare [Money] exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House).—[Mr. R. A. Butler.]

Orders of the Day — COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT AND WELFARE BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

4.41 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Alan Lennox-Boyd): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I returned yesterday via Cyprus from a visit to Aden Colony and a tour of the Western and Eastern Aden Protectorates. Wherever I went in my Aden journeys I saw evidence of how development and welfare schemes are working and the urgent need for their rapid extension. It is certainly true that visits like the one which I have just concluded show up for Ministers in the most vivid way the value of legislation of this kind. There is no more agreeable task for a Secretary of State than to present to Parliament a Bill seeking fresh capital for colonial development. There can, I think, be few purposes for which Parliament is more ready to grant money.
We all recall the circumstances in which Parliament passed the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, 1940. Many of us who were in the Forces at the time will remember that, and I happened to be on leave myself that very day. It was an act of faith in our ultimate victory in the Second World War. That Act was passed at a time of critical danger to the United Kingdom when few people outside these islands thought we would survive. In those days we were pioneering something which has now become an accepted doctrine of our time, the need to help underdeveloped countries to raise their living standards.
This is a world-wide problem in which this country plays its full part, but we feel, and I know the House feels, that the particular responsibility of this country in promoting the development of underdeveloped countries lies in the Commonwealth, and within the Commonwealth itself we have our very special responsibilities to the Colonies. There is no division of view about that, I think, between the parties in this House—though the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle), who is to speak later, and whom I congratulate on what I think is her first appearance on the Front


Bench, will, no doubt, find a place here and there where she can exercise her experienced critical talents.
We in the United Kingdom can be proud of the magnitude of the efforts we have made so far. In the White Paper of 1957 on the Rôle of the United Kingdom in Commonwealth Development we said that over the years from 1953 to 1956 the United Kingdom average investment in the whole Commonwealth, with our financial assistance to the Colonies by way of grants-in-aid of administration or to assist with emergencies or natural disasters, was running at nearly £200 million a year. We pointed out that, set against the average of our gross national product in that period, this represented some 1¼ per cent., or, put another way, between 7 per cent. and 8 per cent. of our gross fixed investment at home. These figures related to the Commonwealth as a whole. Our estimate for the Colonies was that the flow of United Kingdom private funds for public capital purposes and of United Kingdom official funds for both capital and current purposes had been running at about £100 million a year.
At the very successful Commonwealth Trade and Economic Conference held some months ago at Montreal we announced a new type of Commonwealth assistance loan under the Export Guarantees Acts of 1949 and 1957 to assist in the economic development of the independent measures of the Commonwealth. We also at the same time announced our intention to introduce legislation to provide for a continuation of colonial development and welfare assistance to the Colonies and also—and this was a significant development—to provide a new system of Exchequer loans for the Colonies. This is the dual purpose of the present Bill, which is thus confined to assistance for the Colonies.
The question whether assistance should be given to a territory after it has become independent, a matter of very great importance, I recognise, raises separate issues of policy. The purpose of the present Bill is to continue a system of assistance which is designed to suit the particular relationship between the United Kingdom and Her Majesty's Government here and the Colonial Territories. As a system, a method, of helping a country it would not be appropriate for use in independent territories and, in

so far as assistance is given to independent Commonwealth territories, we have got to find other ways and means of giving this help.
For this reason Clause 2 (7) of the Bill provides that any territory which becomes independent will cease to be eligible for colonial development and welfare assistance. It will, therefore, no longer be necessary, as territories come to full independence within the Commonwealth, to include any such provision in future independence Acts—as we were obliged to do in the Ghana Act—for territories for whose international relations we are not responsible. This does not represent any change in policy at all.

Mr. James Callaghan: As to that subsection I wonder if the Colonial Secretary can tell us whether commitments entered into by those Governments before they attained their independence will be fulfilled by the Government? Or will they be cut off, too?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: No. They are certainly continued. The way in which we were approaching that was explained in some detail at the time of the Ghana Bill.
The background to the Bill is explained in some detail in the White Paper, Cmnd. 672, Colonial Development and Welfare Acts, of which the House knows. This White Paper covers the ground pretty comprehensively, but there are certain points to which I should like to draw particular attention.
The first part of the Bill is designed to extend the period of the existing Colonial Development and Welfare Acts and to make more money available for schemes made under the Act. I have in recent months when travelling round various Colonial Territories been very much embarrassed by being unable to say definitely that the Act would be extended over the next five years. I have known perfectly well that it would be, but I have not been able to anticipate decisions of Parliament, and all sorts of unnecessary difficulties have arisen because I have appeared to be somewhat cagey when asked direct questions about that. The purpose of the Bill is, therefore, to extend that period.
All but 2 per cent. of the money that we have provided over the years is in the


form of grants. The House will have seen in the White Paper a brief history of the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts over the years. Expenditure is now running at rather more than £12 million a year, and the total expenditure from April, 1946, to March, 1958, has amounted to £155,418,000. Some recent large sums are mentioned in particular in paragraph 8 of the White Paper. They demonstrate the very great importance of colonial development and welfare assistance in a wide variety of fields. There are, of course, any number of schemes which I could mention any one of which illustrates the value of colonial development and welfare help.
Hon. Members will remember the state of health in Bathurst previously. Such schemes include, for example, the construction of the Victoria Hospital at Bathurst which has given for the first time an efficient and comprehensive hospital and health service to that town. Then there is the help in the form of advice, which is of immense importance in this technical age. A small but very important project has been the contribution towards the cost of technical assistance and technical advisers for the Federal Government of the West Indies. These advisers have done a great deal to advise and help in education, agriculture, health and building in the Federation. On the research side, many new ventures have been started and a great deal of fascinating work has been done, mainly by putting the right man in the right place and at the right time.
I hope that the people who are doing this work all over the Colonial Territories realise the gratitude and admiration of the House. Despite the fact that a number of territories for which I as Secretary of State have hitherto had Parliamentary responsibility have become self-governing Dominions, we are recruiting over the whole field of officers—administrative, technical and professional people—over four times as many as we were recruiting before the war.
None of these schemes would have been possible without colonial development and welfare funds. But many hon. Members who have studied this matter with great care know only too well that the actual spending of money on capital development is the last step in quite a

long process. Plans have to be made in some detail and priorities decided in Colonial Territories. In the last week or so in Aden all sorts of suggested but competing claims have been put to me, as they are put to hon. Members when they travel in territories in the Commonwealth, as invariably is the practice for them to be able to do.
This means that the whole machinery of Government has to be used and staff recruited in order that colonial legislators may have before them sound and comprehensive development plans, on which they can form proper judgments and for which they, have to approve considerable expenditure from their own resources. At the same time, we in the Colonial Office do what we can, and it is a very big job, to provide in increasing measure the wide range of advice needed by colonial Governments.
Over a wide field the situation has now been reached in which colonial Governments are generally thoroughly accustomed to the idea of development planning and to the execution of development schemes. There is, however, still a very great deal more to be done. Major works of an unusual nature usually require the recruitment of additional staff and very careful consideration by colonial Governments before they can be started. But there has been a change in the situation over the last few years. It is now true to say that over a wide range of activity the physical prerequisites for development already exist and that the limiting factor is now more often that of finance than availability of trained manpower or supplies, particularly in the larger territories. This is an extremely important factor in considering future policy.
I have been Secretary of State for the Colonies for not far short of five years, which I think is the longest time since the illustrious days of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, and I know how four years or so ago this problem frequently turned not on money but on the difficulty of getting supplies and trained personnel. It now looks, however, as if it is finance that is the major hurdle over which we have to get. It is the purpose of the Bill to provide means of doing so.
The problem of finance is not simply one of providing grants from United


Kingdom funds. Colonial Governments have made very large efforts to provide substantial sums of money from their own resources, and in addition they have relied on external borrowing to meet the gap between what they can provide from their own resources, supplemented by what we can give from colonial development and welfare funds and the amount of expenditure which they felt able to incur. The House knows that there has been recently a deterioration in the terms of trade of many primary producing Colonies through a fall in the price of commodities on the sale of which they depend.
Whilst this helps the cost of living in many parts of the world, it brings great difficulties to the primary producing countries. It has naturally affected the ability of those countries to devote substantial sums of money from their own resources to development and welfare. At the same time, the increased burden of recurrent charges which have to be met on capital works already carried out, have further restricted their ability to provide capital sums from their own resources.
We have said in paragraph 11 of the White Paper that in several territories the immediate effect of development has been to increase the demand on Government resources, as, in the short run, the cost of running and maintaining roads, schools, hospitals and similar services often exhausts the additions to national income and Government revenue which these new facilities and opportunities produce. The most difficult operation for colonial governments involves striking a balance between what may be thought essential in development in the long run and what can be financed as regards continuing recurrent expenditure from local resources.
I know that the House is particularly anxious about the smaller territories. I certainly am. So were my predecessors of the late Labour Government and they had a special inquiry made into their problems. I began my régime at the Colonial Office in the confident hope that it would be possible to evolve a common pattern of treatment for the smaller territories as such, but I have been forced to the conclusion that they vary so infinitely in their problems that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have a common approach. But we can have a common

approach in giving them financial assistance.
These small territories present special problems in this respect, as the cost per head of administering the territory rises sharply when the population is less than between 50,000 and 100,000. They have to be permanently subsidised on capital and recurrent account if they are to maintain even the barest minimum level of services. These considerations suggest that the need for external financial assistance to the Colonies will continue for a long time. The existing arrangements for colonial development and welfare grants are now well tried and there is no doubt whatever that they are well understood in the Colonial Territories and now form a natural part of the arrangements for development.
We must remember, of course, that they are only a part of the total resources which have been and will be used and that the success of our assistance through this means depends to a very great extent on the success of the other economic measures taken by Her Majesty's Government and by other Commonwealth Governments to promote economic expansion of the Commonwealth as a whole. Here we note with pleasure the great interest that the Dominion of Canada is showing in the economic development of the West Indies. The more the sister Dominions are associated in helping with problems of this kind the more we shall all be pleased.
The amounts provided for by the Bill should be sufficient to increase the rate of colonial development and welfare expenditure over the next five years. The total amount of new money is £95 million, which compares with £80 million made available in 1955 on the present quinquennium. In 1955, the territories eligible for colonial assistance included the then Gold Coast, now Ghana, and Malaya. Although Ghana did not receive any additional assistance in 1955, Malaya was allocated £4 million. In 1955 also the needs of Nigeria were met by an allocation of £13·08 million, but Nigeria is, of course, to become an independent country within the Commonwealth in 1960.
In order to show comparative figures, I think that we ought to exclude the £24 million which is to be allocated to Malta. This means that there will be £71 million


of new money for other territories together with the unspent balance on 31st March of this year of about £44 million of moneys provided under previous Acts. This adds up to mean that £115 million will be available far spending in the five years from 1st April of this year, at an average rate of £23 million a year. At the present time, the colonial development and welfare expenditure in the current year is expected to amount to about £19½ million and in the coming financial year it will be £25 million but this is explained because not less than £2 million of that will be required in that year in Malta.
The sum provided in the Bill is therefore designed to permit a steady expansion of colonial development and welfare expenditure in the territories to which the Act will continue to apply. If the special programme of assistance to Malta is included in the figures, this expenditure will probably be at an average rate of over £25 million a year compared with the current actual rate of about £20 million a year, including expenditure in Nigeria.
The House will know about the provisions for an overlap which we found to be a very desirable thing and which is described in paragraph 12 of the White Paper. We adopted this device last time, I think with unanimous approval, and it is needed to eliminate any sag in development expenditure and to avoid certain administrative difficulties concerned with contracts, training courses and things of that kind.
Perhaps the House will forgive me if I say a word about the entirely novel plan of the Exchequer loans and also if I say that this is something to which for a very long time I personally and those who work with me in the Colonial Office have attached the greatest possible importance. It is very difficult to give details now, but these provisions represent a new and important departure in our policy.
Colonial Governments have hitherto relied almost entirely on the London market and other external sources for any loans that might be necessary. In certain cases loans from Her Majesty's Government's funds have been provided for special projects like the airfield in Hong Kong and the municipal services associated with the oil refinery in Aden, where I was a couple of weeks ago and saw something of the immense boon which

that oil refinery has meant to the people of Aden.
It is, however, now quite clear that the demand for loan funds likely to be made over the next five years may well be greater than can be obtained from the resources of the London market. The colonial Governments have a first-class record as borrowers on the London market on their own account. No Colony or former Colony has ever defaulted on the payment of interest or the repayment of capital in respect of its loans. The first-class record of the Colonies has once again been demonstrated by the recent successful issues on the London market by Barbados, Antigua and St. Lucia. The Government of Jamaica is now hoping to break fresh ground and enter the New York market for the first time in its own right. I am sure that the House will wish them well in this venture. The raising of market loans is a valuable system which we are confident will continue. Our hope is that not only will the London market, with its tradition of supporting colonial loans, meet to some extent the increased need for money but that other sources will also be tapped.
The fact remains that the colonial Governments are likely to need even more than the increased amount of money which the London market should be able to provide and it is for this reason that we are providing Exchequer loans to be available in those cases where it was clear that a market loan for one reason or another was not possible.
Paragraph 16 of the White Paper describes the security offered by colonial issues on the London market and the legislative steps taken by Colonial Territories to put beyond any doubt their acceptance and their fulfilment of their obligations. All loans by colonial Governments on the London market are made on terms framed to appeal to the market at the time of issue. There is no doubt that these issues have had and will continue to have many attractions for investors.
The part to be played by the Exchequer in the new system of Exchequer loans is that of a lender of last resort. There is another reason—a very important one—why Exchequer loans are of cardinal importance in development planning. Over the next five years, colonial Governments must be able to rely on a basic minimum


of external loan finance if they are to carry out their development programmes. Because of the doubt in their minds whether the London market can provide the full amounts likely to be necessary, only the assurance given by the Exchequer loans system can give the colonial Governments the necessary assurance that the loans which they need can in fact be provided. The Bill, therefore, provides for up to £100 million for Exchequer loans from the Consolidated Fund over five years, an average of £20 million a year if the need arises and an annual ceiling on approved loans of £25 million.
We believe that this sum, when added to what the London market can provide—and the London market naturally is free to provide as much as it can—and to what can be secured from other external sources, such as the International Bank, should be enough to provide the colonial Governments with their needs in the way of external loans over the next five years.
These loans will normally be provided to meet the cost of the loan-worthy element in general development programmes but from time to time it may be desirable to make loans to a specific project. It is absolutely essential to have the utmost flexibility in this scheme. If a London market loan for one reason or another cannot be secured then an Exchequer loan must be so made as to provide money for the same purposes as a London market loan would do.
In other cases, however, it may be desirable to provide money directly for a specific project if the circumstances of the case point in that direction. We are providing that the same provisions as to trade unions, fair wages and the employment of children will apply to Exchequer loans as they do and have done for years to the existing type of colonial development and welfare assistance.
I should like to say a brief word about the terms of these Exchequer loans. All that the Bill does is to provide that these will be fixed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies with the approval of the Treasury. No doubt no hon. and right hon. Members will be surprised at that insertion. We have set out in the White Paper what the terms will normally be. We have had in mind in all this that we must not make the terms more favourable than those on market issues. I think that

the reasons for that are obvious. Otherwise those Governments which are able to borrow on the market would be paying more for their money than the Governments borrowing from the Exchequer.
The Bill is the next step in a programme of continuous assistance to colonial Governments and I think that the significant feature to which I have drawn attention of Exchequer loans is one which will particularly commend itself to the House. Apart from this provision, the system of help to the Colonies is well known and has stood the test of time. Both in London and in colonial Territories the practice of development planning and the execution of development works has reached a high level of efficiency and in many cases the limiting factor is now more that of finance than of physical capacity.
We believe that expansion in development spending is now feasible and desirable, and we believe that the amounts provided in the Bill will enable a substantial expansion in fact to take place. We have to remember, nonetheless, that in development planning colonial Governments have to do what I mentioned earlier—to strike a difficult balance between the execution of projects which may be essential and their ability to bear the recurrent costs which are associated with those projects.
Colonial development and welfare grants, market and Exchequer loans will make increased capital development work possible, but in the long run colonial Governments must be able to bear on their revenues the recurrent charges involved in improved modern services. This implies that our efforts must be directed primarily to the type of development which will increase the resources of the territories. In this context, the measures taken to expand Commonwealth trade are, of course, of the first importance. We should not have put forward these proposals as confidently as we have put them forward had we not believed that there would also occur over the period of the next few years an expansion in Colonial trade and a strengthening generally of Colonial economics.
The Bill should help forward in a substantial way the development of those territories for which we are all responsible and where in the economic, the social and the constitutional field many


difficult decisions of the first importance have to be taken. Many problems crowd in on a Colonial Secretary, any one of which might have occupied the attention of a Session for one of my predecessors in the past century and many of which now arise in a matter of hours.
Many of these problems raise difficult controversial decisions. Some of these decisions which we shall have to take are certain to be fiercely criticised, and they will be more vehemently criticised by those who do not know the whole story than by those who do. Perhaps in later years if the wheels of fate so determine—although it is very unlikely—they might give a chance to other people to study some of the problems, and they might then come to more tolerant conclusions about the actions of their predecessors. In this field of economic expansion and of welfare, however, I am happy to think that the House as a whole is agreed on the aims and on the way to achieve them.

Mr. James Johnson: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an example of the controversial decisions on economic planning of which he speaks?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: If perhaps the hon. Member had been more intent on listening to what I was saying than preparing his supplementary question he would have known that I was dealing with controversial questions not about economics but about the social and constitutional problems which we have to solve. I specifically said that in the economic field I thought there was agreement on the aims and on how to achieve them.

5.13 p.m.

Mr. James Callaghan: In general, we support the Bill. The Colonial Secretary's speech has covered the ground. I congratulate him on avoiding, until the last sentence, any mention of any particular controversy which might have aroused the House, although on two occasions he invoked hi3 predecessors of the nineteenth century and on one occasion he mentioned Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. Does he believe that Mr. Joseph Chamberlain would have sat there silent this afternoon while a British Member of Parliament was excluded from Nyasaland?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Had the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland existed at the

time of my illustrious predecessor, and had he helped to introduce the Bill conferring certain powers on the Federation, he would have been the last person to have attempted to get back the powers which Parliament had formally handed to the Federation.

Mr. Callaghan: What the Colonial Secretary is saying is that the British taxpayer may go on paying in Nyasaland but he is not allowed the right for his representatives to visit the territory.
We have a situation described in the White Paper in which considerable sums are being devoted to colonial development and welfare in Nyasaland—several millions of pounds of the British taxpayers' money. I hope that this interests the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke). Yet we have reached a situation today in which my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) is not allowed to go into that territory. I do not believe that the Colonial Secretary. in his heart of hearts, supports what is being done, and we shall have to return to the matter, because, as he knows better than anybody—because he understands the position—we are today conceding to the Africans in Nyasaland the argument that this House has deserted its responsibility and that they are now under flit control of Southern Rhodesia.
That is what the whole argument is about, and it has been confirmed by the failure of the Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations to make arrangements for my hon. Friend to continue his tour. A bad day's work has been done by the Government today, the result of which we shall see over many months. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State does not think it amusing, because I assure him that it is not. It is a most serious matter and a most serious decision for the Government to reach.

Mr. E. H. C. Leather: It is true that the British taxpayers' money is being spent in Nyasaland, but we also give a great deal of the British taxpayers' money to the Colombo Plan. Is it not a fact that if the Ceylon Government took it into their head to forbid a British citizen to enter Ceylon they have precisely the same rights in such a matter as the Federal Government of Rhodesia and Nyasaland?

Mr. Callaghan: I can imagine what the hon. Member's reaction would be if the Socialist Government of Ceylon, which is made up of Singhalese and Tamils, were to take this action. He should not be discriminatory. He knows very well what the reaction of 90 per cent. of hon. Members would be in those circumstances. This is simply not a party issue, or at least it should not be a party issue.

Mr. Leather: I am not being discriminatory.

Mr. Callaghan: This is a territory in which we have very considerable responsibilities, as is well known to every hon. Member who looks at the list of responsibilities laid down in the Federal law. It is monstrous that any hon. Member should stoop to try to defend the exclusion of an hon. Member of the House from Nyasaland, and I hope that the hon. Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Leather) will have second thoughts about it.
I do not wish to pursue this matter, and had not the shadow of Joseph Chamberlain been raised I should not have brought the matter up. I believe that on this issue Joseph Chamberlain would have been with us and not with the Government.
I turn to discuss the Bill in more particular, although what I have been saying, I am sure, is very much in order in view of the fact that we are voting money for Nyasaland. The Colonial Secretary has touched on the measure of the task which we have to face here, and I should like shortly to expand it, because what is happening in these territories is that the growth of population as a result of improved health facilities, improved drugs and improved health generally is leading to a growing pressure on food supplies. The result is that instead of these territories moving ahead and improving their position, some of them are finding very great difficulties even in standing still and in maintaining the standard of life which they enjoyed twenty, thirty or forty years ago.
According to my economic friends, we in the advanced countries generate our new capital through our own savings, and because we have reached a fairly high standard of life we can set aside a portion of our earnings for the savings which should help to generate the next

lot of capital. It is fairly easy to do that in this country or in Western Europe or in the United States, but how difficult it is to do the job of generating one's own capital through one's own savings in countries where the income per head is £10, £15 or £20 per annum. That is basically why the House sets aside a portion of our own savings for the aid of those under-developed territories which are having a very hard job in generating their own capital.
Mr. P. T. Bauer, in a book recently, uttered a truism which I think is still worth repealing. He said that the Colonial Territories are poor because they are poor, and he went on to explain that what he meant was that because they are poor they have not the social services, the education, the health facilities or the technical skill which would enable them to jump to the next level. And because they do not possess this they remain poor. Indeed, there is a vicious circle from which, by this Bill, it is hoped to do something to enable these territories to break out.
An even more alarming conclusion which he reached was that in parts of the world today the gap between the rich nations and the poor nations is growing greater than it was at the turn of the century. If that be so, if, in fact, in these backward territories we have not yet been able to generate a saving sufficient to enable them to move ahead at the same pace that more advanced nations are moving, then the social tensions in Asia and Africa will grow. Let us face it: the attraction of some form of totalitarianism will seem very much greater than it would appear in countries where a reasonably good standard of life is enjoyed.
When I was in Djakarta recently I was going through the bazaar and saw some of the tracts which the Chinese Communists are publishing at ld. a time and giving away. It was most illuminating to see the appeal being made by the Chinese Communists to the peasants of Indonesia—"Look at the transformation we are making in the lives of our peasants here. We may have to be stern with them, but at least their standard of life is improving," If one is suffering from the effects of raging inflation; if there are hungry periods in certain parts


of the year, one may be prepared to accept a little toughness. Freedom may not seem quite so important, if the alternative which is offered is good and regular crops and a full belly.
The simple fact is that, despite this Bill and the aid which is being given, the battle is still far from being won. It is true that these territories are shouldering the major part of the burden of generating their own saving. Paragraph 2 of the White Paper says that the local resources responsible for financing development schemes come to £600 million a year. The grants under the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts come to £137 million, and loans from the London Market and the International Bank total £200 million. So that, in fact, the underdeveloped territories are raising much more than half of the development finances being put into these territories.
As a result, and as the White Paper goes on to show, in paragraph 3, the "gross domestic product"—which, I understand, is economist's jargon for the national cake—grows at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum. Perhaps that might not seem too bad, but the Leader of the House once told us that we should double our standard of living in twenty-five years, which is the equivalent of 4 per cent. per annum. That is based on a stable population, but, as I have pointed out, in these territories the population is not stable.
When I was in Singapore recently I was told by the Minister of Commerce there that the population is growing at the rate of 4 per cent. to 5 per cent. per annum, while trade remains practically stationary. Therefore, that territory, with a population of nearly 2 million, is in the category of those countries which are finding it extremely difficult to remain in the same position while running very hard. The existing unemployment in Singapore is something which must be regarded seriously by any one studying these colonial problems.
We support the Bill, as I say, but we shall have criticisms to make of its administrative provisions. I agree with the Secretary of State for the Colonies that in some ways its effect is more than offset by the fluctuations in the prices of

primary products. In 1956, Mr. Hammarskjöld, the Secretary-General of United Nations, pointed this out when he said that a 5 per cent. rise, or fall, in the prices of primary products was equivalent to the entire capital, private, public, loans and grants, made available to the underdeveloped countries. Therefore, it is of much more value to the underdeveloped countries that they should have a period of stability, or of slightly rising levels of the prices of primary products, than that they should receive all the aid which can be given by the British taxpayer.
I was very glad, but surprised, to hear the Colonial Secretary say that this is based on the hope—indeed, I think that the right hon. Gentleman said on the expected—expansion of colonial trade. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is right, but I did not find that same confidence during my recent visit to parts of the Commonwealth. I found a genuine worry about the effects of the Common Market on colonial exports. In at least two countries I found that efforts were being made to negotiate separately with individual members of the Common Market to try to procure access to the markets that exist in Common Market territories.
I wish that we had been able to gather the whole Commonwealth together in the negotiations which have taken place on the Common Market. I wish that the Commonwealth countries had been not only informed about what was going on, but had been invited to take part in those negotiations. I can assure the Colonial Secretary that his optimism is not shared by many to whom I spoke about the conditions enforced on colonial trade. Indeed, the most pessimistic of the people to whom I spoke thought that there was likely to be a strangulation of trade; that it is likely to lessen rather than to increase. If that be so, we must face this problem at an early date and endeavour to ensure, for the sake of the future of these Colonial Territories, and of the Commonwealth generally, and the future of the people of these islands, that we do not allow ourselves to be manoeuvred into that position.
When the Secretary-General of the United Nations called for a stabilisation of the prices of primary products as he did in 1956, he was, in so many words,


censuring the light-hearted way in which Her Majesty's Government have thrown away a number of price stabilisation agreements which already existed. I much regret that the Government have carried their ideology into the sphere of Commonwealth welfare, because their desire—their urgent desire—to get away from all these controlled prices has added to the difficulties of the Colonies and the Commonwealth countries.
I wish to take up another point made by the Minister. He referred to the fall in the price levels of these primary products helping the cost of living in other countries. It may do that.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Short-term.

Mr. Callaghan: Yes, short-term—the right hon. Gentleman did not say that originally. But I agree. I do not suppose that he and I are too far apart on this—at least, I hope not. But the next effect is that exports fall away, which is what is happening today.
All of us who have visited the Colonial Territories have seen development plans from which projects have been deleted; projects which need steel and skill and many of the commodities and implements which this country could provide, but which the territories cannot afford to finance. It is possible to buy a low cost of living at a high price in terms of employment. This is a lesson which must be drawn from what has happened over the last few years. I believe that the Government were wrong to be obsessed by the ideology of free markets in the sphere of primary products.
When we examine the plans which have been drawn up; when we see the reports of budget deficiencies now occurring in Tanganyika and Uganda; when we realise that they will not be able to finance their development at the existing level, let alone expand—despite the provisions contained in the Bill—we realise that this matter must be taken very seriously. It is having the effect of cutting back the development plans which the provisions contained in the Bill are intended to accelerate and promote.
I wish to ask some questions of the Colonial Secretary. He did not tell us how this sum had been arrived at. He said that the Colonies could spend more, if the resources were available. How much more? I assume that there is a

series of five-year plans for the Colonial Territories which have been assembled at the Colonial Office and which have been added up.
The Colonial Secretary should know the total that those territories feel they could reasonably undertake during the next five years, if they had the finance. I would ask the Under-Secretary of State to tell us the difference between the amount allocated under the Bill and the amount which the Colonial Territories believe they could reasonably and profitably expend during the five years, if the finance were available. As the Colonial Secretary said, that is a major hurdle.
Assuming that there is a shortfall—as we know there is—how are the amounts parcelled out? Who takes the decision how much each territory shall get? I am sure that these are political and not wholly economic decisions. There was an advisory committee in the Colonial Office during the régime of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones). but it was wound up after 1951. I do not know the reasons, but heavier responsibility was clearly thrown upon Colonial Office officials for parcelling out such assistance as is available than when they had the benefit of a group of experts advising the Colonial Secretary, who could make judgments of what was needed, and where.
When one reads the list of territories to which aid has been given, one might assume that the more political trouble there is the greater the aid the territories get. If one compares the aid given to British Guiana, British Honduras and Kenya with Somaliland and the forgotten islands in the Pacific, one might wonder whether the criterion for aid is not, "The more Communists the more considerable the sum." If a territory has a violent nationalist movement it can be sure of getting aid.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Surely that is precisely the plea with which the hon. Member opened his own speech.

Mr. Callaghan: I said that where there was hunger and poverty in a territory we ran a danger of Communist development. If there is danger of Communism because of the hunger in a place like Somaliland it gets a much greater allocation of aid.


I am asking for the basis on which aid is allocated.
I regret very much the Government's refusal to adapt this welfare aid to the newly emergent, independent territories. Why do we cut ourselves off from them in this way and make it a penalty of independence that the territories shall receive no more development and welfare aid? I was glad to hear the Colonial Secretary say that under Clause 2 (7), although these Colonies are to be cut off from aid when they become independent, the commitments will be carried out. He said that that had always been the case.
I would ask the Under-Secretary a little more about this, because I am told that it was not always the case. Perhaps there is some doubt about it. When the West Indian Federation came into being there was a balance of more than £8 million under her allocation, and £4½ million more of actual commitments to her under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, still unspent. Leaving aside grants-in-aid and £1 million grant for the establishment of the Federal headquarters, it would be reasonable to give her the balance of our commitments to her. I understood from the Colonial Secretary that that had already happened. Is there some misapprehension about this?
The right hon. Gentleman said that under Clause 2 (7) that would not be altered, but I am given other illustrations. Malaya was more generously treated than Ghana. There was actually a residual amount left unspent from her not inconsiderable assistance. Surely a case could be made out that when we have entered into specific commitments prior to independence we should meet them in full before the bond is severed. It may be that there is some mistake about this and I would ask about it. That was the point I raised during the Colonial Secretary's speech. Perhaps the Under-Secretary will go into the matter a little more fully.
I come to the question of loans. As the Colonial Secretary has said, this is the new feature of the Bill for these territories, and we welcome it. The conditions seem rather onerous. The Government insist that the territories should go to the London money market first, where interest rates will be high because of the

economic policy of the Government. They say also that when territories repay the loans it shall be by equal instalments of capital and interest. I would ask the Under-Secretary of State the reason for that. Is it an ordinary commercial provision that capital should be repaid over thirty years, starting from year one, by equal instalments? Organisations and institutions who have to raise and repay capital do not have to repay it on those onerous terms.
This is an extremely heavy provision to lay upon these territories when their revenue-earning projects are so small and when this amount is in any case to be part of a project for developing the social superstructure of roads, communications, schools and a great many other types of project which are not revenue-earning. Unless the Government have had second thoughts on the matter, we shall ask the Committee on the Bill to consider whether this is not too heavy a burden to put upon the territories.
The Colonial Secretary said that he was glad to see this provision in the Bill because the short-term advances that had been made to a number of these territories were now catching up on them. They would be in very great difficulty in meeting their obligations under the short-term advances unless they were allowed to convert them into long-term loans. In so far as that is true, will the loans be available for financing new projects or will they not really be raised for servicing the loan that has already been given?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: That will undoubtedly be a heavy charge on the loan in the first year or so, but thereafter one hopes that it will be used for other purposes.

Mr. Callaghan: I assumed that that was the case, and I am much obliged to the Colonial Secretary. We ought to get it clear. In the first year, the first £20 million may not be of very great help to the territories in financing new development. That makes what I asked earlier of greater importance than it seemed at the time. When we look at what the money market has been able to do, according to paragraph 17 of the White Paper, we realise that it has not been a very glorious record in the last few years. I do not blame the London money


market for this, but I place the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Government benches.
In 1952, the first year of office of the present Government, £30 million was the amount of trustee stock issued in London by colonial Governments, but it dwindled away to £16 million, £10 million, £11 million, and, in 1957, £15 million. In 1958, it was £5 million, which was all that the London money market could find. The reason was that these Governments could not afford to pay the high rates of interest that were demanded by the London money market, as a result of the economic policy followed by the British Government on those benches.

Sir John Barlow: The hon. Gentleman should recollect that a large amount of profit was ploughed back into the Colonies, quite apart from the new money obtained from the London money market. The advances from profits were very much greater, in fact, than the figures show.

Mr. Callaghan: I do not dispute that. I do not know whether it is true or not, but I do not dispute it. I am not sure how relevant it is because the profits ploughed back are not devoted to the sort of purpose to which these loans, which were running at fairly high rate, are devoted. Surely there is no difference between us on that. Profits made by the copper companies in Northern Rhodesia are not used for making roads, but for getting more copper. For this purpose the London money market was fulfilling a very useful rôle in the past, but now this has been run down.

Mr. John Tilney (Liverpool, Waver-tree): The hon. Member will realise that in many parts of the Commonwealth profits are used to build new industries.

Mr. Callaghan: Yes, and in that sense they will be capable of raising more money for the territory. Why should we argue about this? If it was of value to have £30 million raised by the London money market in 1952, why is it not of value to do that in 1958 instead of having only £5 million? If it was good in 1952 it would have been good in 1958.
The simple truth is that the economic policy followed by this Government, which has resulted in a measure of un-

employment and short-time working at home, is resulting in privations in the Colonies as a whole. The economic policy followed by the Government is the cause of slowing down development overseas. That fact should be clearly understood. What the Colonial Secretary is doing with the aid of the Chancellor is putting money into one pocket to take it out of the other.
This Bill, to some extent, and the loans, to some extent, are a rescue operation, because the London money market is unable to take on the job it used to do, or was in the habit of doing, either because the Colonies cannot afford the money or the London money market wants much greater security and guarantee than it has at present. As for the International Bank, which the Colonial Secretary mentioned, that has been of practically no use to our Colonial Territories. It wants gilt-edged, gold-plated, jewel-studded, copper-bottomed investment before it will risk a penny. What private enterprise cannot do, the British taxpayer has to do instead and, as usual, we are coming to the aid of private enterprise.
When the Colonial Secretary boasts about these loans it shows to what extent the Socialist Party has infected him. I am very glad indeed to hear him advocating a good Socialist Measure of this sort. Of course, he falls away. He has not got to the point where he can say, "Let them come to us before going to the London money market and we shall charge them a reasonable rate of interest." But I should net be surprised if, in twenty-five years' time, his successor, as he said of Joseph Chamberlain, will say, "If Alan Lennox-Boyd were here new he would be taking credit for this". We on our side have hopes that in colonial affairs we shall be able to carry the Conservative Party with us stage by stage as we have done in so many ways in the last fourteen years.
About the loans which these Colonial Territories will have to take up, there has been same talk about matching loans, by which I understand that when a grant is given under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act a loan has to be taken up as well. I do not know the purpose of that, but I hope, especially with the present high rates of interest, it will not be the policy of the Colonial Office to


say, "If we lend you £½ million then £¼ million will be by way of grant and for the other £½ million you must go to the money market." If that is not the policy—and I gather it is not—what is the purpose?
I have finished my points of detailed comment on the Bill. We cannot be sure how adequate it is until we see the full picture revealed by the Under-Secretary later tonight, but it is a modest step forward. We should like to see it go further. We still believe that neither the White Paper nor the contents of the Bill match the needs of the situation. It mean a higher degree of saving by the British people if we are to go further.
If we were to ask the British people to go further we should not be able either to have the remissions of taxation in full which may take place when the Budget comes, or to allow for the fullest possible increase in the standard of living of the British people which otherwise would be available. In other words, we should be asking them to put away a little more now so that there should be a greater reward later. The greater reward need not necessarily be a financial reward. It may be that they would prefer to have 6d. off Income Tax in April than a little more on this bill, but the issue should be presented to them.
We present it this way. It is better to save more now in order to invest in these territories. In a continent like Africa, which is passing through a revolutionary period, in a continent like Asia, which is going through one of the biggest revolutions the world has seen, if we really wish to create a stable world in which people will not be driven by hunger, poverty and misery to violent courses and to follow totalitarian doctrines, it is better not to have 6d. off Income Tax but to put more money into this scheme.
We believe that that is long-sighted statesmanship and it is why we would be quite willing to say to the British people that they should go further. We think that the Government have done something and we support what they have done, but we would like to see it carried further. We believe it would be in the long-term interest of the British people if it were carried further. We are certain that it would redound to the benefit and credit

of our people and believe that it would raise the standard of living of the people overseas, many of whom—as all of us who have seen these territories know—are living below levels which any Christian could, in his heart, support.

5.46 p.m.

Mr. John Peel: In very warmly welcoming this Bill this afternoon, I wish to couple that with a great, enduring and continuing memorial to a very great Colonial Secretary, Mr. Oliver Stanley. Only in the hands of a good and sensible Government, such as this country has at the moment, is it possible to continue to increase the sums made available in this way.
I was particularly glad to see in the White Paper about the Bill that the percentage spent an education was as high as, if not higher, than that spent on any other item. I very much hope that will continue, because it seems that at present education is the most important factor in our relationship with the dependent Commonwealth. Especially at this moment, the outstanding requirement is for technicians, because it is vital that the standard of living of these territories should be raised. It is all very well to talk about intellectual and moral standards and political knowledge, but I am afraid that none of those things is going to be acceptable unless bellies are full, or fuller than they are at present. Therefore, it is vitally important that material progress should be in the forefront.
It is undoubtedly a race between the Communist and the free world for the hearts and minds of the people in the dependent territories. The Communist world is determined to capture them if it can, and will do so through help in material ways. The heart of the problem is the provision of science teachers. We must step this up considerably so that technical progress may be assured.
I have spoken about capturing the hearts and minds of these people, and particularly of the Africans. It seems to me that fundamentally at the root of the Bill and all help to the dependent Commonwealth lies the vital necessity to ensure that we get the sympathy, the co-operation and the willing wish of these peoples to adopt the free world way of life.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) would, perhaps, agree that when, as at present, it is necessary to think first and foremost of creating racial harmony rather than racial division in these territories, and particularly in Africa, possibly some hon. Members from his side of the House do not contribute very well to this vital requirement.

Mr. Callaghan: I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) will be back in the House soon and able to speak for himself. From the Press reports that I have seen, however, and from the letter written by a distinguished journalist in the Rhodesia Herald, I doubt whether even hon. Members opposite would be able to disagree with anything that my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury has said. Certainly, they would not disagree with his appeal that the Africans should eschew violence in all circumstances.

Mr. Peel: The trouble is that there is a good deal of double-talk in the world today—

Mr. Callaghan: Really.

Mr. Peel: —and it has been acquired by other than those behind the Iron Curtain.

Mr. Callaghan: I rise to a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The hon. Member has not been a Member of the House very long, but is it in order to impute motives to my hon. Friend by saying that he speaks with two voices on a matter as serious as this?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): I do not think the hon. Member attributed it to one individual. I thought he said that there were two voices on all sides. That was my impression.

Mr. Peel: When we talk about Africans, I hope that hon. Members will not confine themselves to black Africans. There are today quite a lot of white Africans who are proud of being so, people who regard themselves as Kenyans, Rhodesians, and so on. They have contributed greatly to the economic and political development and advancement of these territories.

Mr. J. Johnson: May I ask the hon. Member this question? Is it not fair to

ask the Europeans who have gone to the so-called Dark Continent and now, being in Africa, term themselves Africans to integrate with that society before they use the term "African" behind the term "white"?

Mr. Peel: There are many thousands of Europeans and Indians in Africa who have demonstrated their loyalty to the countries in which they are living by the services they have rendered in raising the standard of living of all peoples and by helping to lighten what the hon. Member calls the Dark Continent.

Mr. Johnson: Surely, social activities also should be included.

Mr. Peel: Yes, social activities too.
The point is that these people in Africa are crying out for education and they are determined to get it. They will get it somehow. It is vital that we should provide it, because if we do not, I fear that they will look for it behind the Iron Curtain or behind the Bamboo Curtain. All hon. Members would regard that as a great tragedy. The threat to the free world might be such that it would be very difficult to meet it.
In considering the necessity for material advancement, for technicians and for scientists, I hope we shall not forget the importance of the humanities. In the long run, there is no doubt that political education and advancement depend upon a sound education in the humanities. It is only in that way that a free democratic society can be built up. For a long time to come, the advanced training would have to be provided in this country and in the other older members of the Commonwealth.
I make the plea that in welcoming these people to this country, we should remember that despite all the financial and material help that we render, it will in the long run be of no great use unless the heart is behind it—in fact, that the heart is really more important than the head, that we must constantly bear in mind that we are a Commonwealth family, that we should behave to all members of the Commonwealth in that spirit and that they should be made welcome. This can be done only on an individual basis. Governments can do a certain amount, but there is nothing quite so real, so good or so lasting in depth as the


personal relationships between all members of the Commonwealth.
That brings me to another point which we have now reached in our long Commonwealth story: that is, that we have come almost full circle. We started more as a trading Empire than as anything else and we are coming back to a trading Commonwealth. Therefore, as the governmental ties steadily weaken and loosen, our commercial and industrial ties should, and will, strengthen. Our commercial and industrial people will bear an ever greater responsibility for our relationships with the Commonwealth.
Throughout our imperial history, the individual commercial people have been the greatest friends of these countries. We must not forget that it was an individual who brought the rubber tree to Malaya. In the future, it will be individual initiative and enterprise—free enterprise—that will play the greatest part in the development and strengthening of our Commonwealth.
Whatever we do on the material plane to assist and help these people, the one thing that we simply must not forget is the vital necessity in difficult times, when there is so much difference and discrepancy, as there is at present, between the intellectual and material stages of advancement of different peoples, to build racial harmony or the whole house will fall to the ground.

5.58 p.m.

Mr. Malcolm MacPherson: I begin by offering an apology to the House, because later in the evening I have to be away to fulfil another engagement at a time when 1 should certainly have been listening to other hon. Members speaking.
In many ways, I found the speech of the hon. Member for Leicester, South-East (Mr. Peel) agreeable. I did not agree with all his comments, but I certainly agreed strongly with his emphasis on the necessity and importance of education. I agreed with him also in what he said about the necessity for producing more technicians and the difficulty of finding the science teachers to help to produce them. I agreed with the hon. Member about his attitude concerning students coming here to seek

their higher education. We should all take as helpful and friendly an attitude as possible to those guests who come to take places in our universities, technical colleges and other institutions.
I am especially glad to be following the hon. Member for Leicester, South-East, because I also want to speak about education. The grants that we are discussing have been, as the hon. Member pointed out, given very largely for educational purposes, and presumably that will continue. Education is essential in the underdeveloped territories, not merely for itself, but as part of the economic drive and also to support the aspirations of any people looking towards self-government. We must assume that these three ideas—economic development, education and aspirations towards selfgovernment—must walk along hand-in-hand.
It is very largely in education that one sees the greatest challenge in the Colonial Territories today. The Secretary of State, in opening the debate, pointed out that the difficulty of finding technicians has become a great deal less now; the major difficulty is to provide the money. But the major difficulty in education is still finding the teachers.
For these reasons, and because of the importance that grants for education have had in the past, I hope that education will bulk as large in the new provisions as in the past. We have not, in the past, made many loans for educational purposes. Indeed, as the Secretary of State pointed out, the loans have been in total very small indeed. All the educational finance has been by way of grant. I take it—and I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will confirm this—that that will be true in the future, because education is not a suitable form of activity to be financed by this kind of loan. It is much more suitable for grants.
If that is so, although educational financing will come out of the grant sector of the money being provided, I hope that the increase in educational financing will go ahead pari passu with the increase in economic financing, because the increase, taking into account both grants and loans, in the total amount provided for by the Bill is fairly substantial. For that reason, I very much hope that the


advance for education will be considerable. I hope that it will maintain, or even increase, its proportion of the present total.
I want to discuss one or two specific aspects of education and ask the Under-Secretary of State one or two things about them and also make one or two suggestions. First, a good deal of the C.D. and W. financing goes to the universities. When this policy was first embarked upon, the general assumption was that C.D. and W. finance should be over and above the ordinary administrative financing of the territory, to provide something out of its reach, so to speak. University education is normally out of the reach of underdeveloped territories. Therefore, a good deal has been provided for university education.
There was published last week the Report of the Lockwood Working Party, which went out to East Africa to make what amounts, I take it, to a final assessment of the situation for providing university and university level education. I was not able to get a copy of the Report until this morning, so I have done no more than skim through it. I noted, however, one or two things which newspaper reports had already forecast.
What is projected in the Lockwood Report is a very considerable extension of higher education in East Africa, a considerable expansion of the Royal Technical College at Nairobi and the establishment of a new university college in Tanganyika. That means very heavy financing. Indeed the Report makes that fairly clear in regard to the Royal Technical College which, if the recommendation in the Report is carried out, will now become a university college.
These changes are, according to the Lockwood Working Party, timed to take place—at least it is hoped that they will take place—within the period that we are discussing in connection with the Bill, that is to say, the next quinquennium. Within the next five or six years or so it is hoped that a good deal of the work will be done and a good many of the proposals carried into effect.
I should like to ask the Under-Secretary of State whether the necessary money will be provided out of C.D. and W. funds, 'because it is not likely that a very high proportion of it can be provided by

the territories concerned. The Report goes into this aspect to some extent, though not in great detail. In the time I had available I was not able to follow the Report in this matter in very considerable detail.
One other point that the Lockwood Report makes, which rather gladdens my heart, is that the university college of Tanganyika should include law. I have previously complained in the House about the lack of law schools in Africa.

Mr. Frank Tomney: We have enough lawyers.

Mr. MacPherson: I do not think that we have enough lawyers, with respect to the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney). We have too few of them in Africa. We need lawyers, because we need people who can not merely argue cases, but who can administer justice. We need lawyers because they contribute a good deal to the understanding of the basic principles on which politics is founded. We need lawyers and the Africans are proving that. Because there are no law schools in Africa, they come to this country for law training. It is about time that we gave the comparatively small amount of funds and resources needed for the establishment of a law school in East Africa. I hope, also, that that will be put into effect.
A point which has often been hammered by my hon. Friends in connection with the future development of university education in East Africa is the extension of adult education under the extra-mural department of Makerere to Tanganyika. From an earlier reply I understood that this might be considered by the Lockwood Working Party. I do not see any reference to it, but I hope that the extension will take place. I hope that the increase in funds will be sufficient to cover that. It would not be a very expensive extension, and it is very urgently needed.
The advantages of adult education seem to me to be mainly two. First, there is the direct benefit of an educational nature, partly the actual learning of the subject-matter and partly the provision of, to some extent, an educated citizenry and parenthood as a background to the youngsters in school.


Secondly, there is the preparation for self-government. Anyone who looks at the writings on its educational system of some of the people who have gone to look at West Africa will be struck by the extraordinary enthusiasm that they all report West Africa to have shown for adult education. The connection between that and running its own affairs—taking over the government of its own territory—is very strong. There is no reason why the same enthusiasm for adult education should not have the opportunity to show itself—as I am sure it would—in Tanganyika, as it shows itself in Kenya and Uganda.
I should like now to put into specific form a question put in a general form by my hon. Friend—the question of priorities, particularly in education. It is enormously important that C.D. and W. funds should be spent on higher education, and the provision of universities and university colleges; but when I put, side by side, the possible provision of higher education in one area—in Tanganyika, for example—and existing provision for ordinary school education in the Copper Belt, I begin to wonder what are the principles that justify a choice one way or the other. It is very difficult. One could advance arguments on The one side and the other, and we should all probably arrive at one or other of the possible conclusions. Nevertheless, one would like to know the principles on which the Government decide.
Secondary education is extremely important. At least comparatively, it figures, financially, to a much smaller extent than university education in C.D. and W. expenditure, but there is a tremendous volume of opinion, of all political shades, suggesting that the real core of education in the underdeveloped countries lies at the secondary level; and that on that we should spend most of our resources. One reason is that it provides the seed bed for further education. It provides the potential technicians, scientists, graduates and the like. If we do not have a lively and strong secondary educational system, a great deal of the rest cannot be built.
If we are to grant more funds, is it possible to give more to secondary education, more particularly as we are meeting a difficulty that has been referred to

already? When we have spent a certain amount of capital on buildings and schools, we begin to find difficulties in following up. We may get children to the primary school, but after that we find that there are no middle-school facilities to follow on, and when we get them into the middle school we find there are no facilities for secondary school education. There is another difficulty. We may be trying to build up university institutions in a territory where there is not enough sixth-form education to provide the necessary inflow of students to them. All these things clamour for more resources to be devoted to secondary education.
Here we meet, I suppose, the difficulty that, in the past, C.D. and W. funds have, by general practice, principle and agreement, been allocated, as I say, to something outside what might normally be expected to be done administratively by the territory. Furthermore, they have been allocated to capital, rather than to recurrent expenditure. What is needed is an elastic policy. We have already seen exceptions to the general principles that I have stated. If we are substantially increasing the amounts, as this Bill does, we might consider concentrating a good deal of the money on secondary education.
Another aspect of education that badly needs strengthening, and financial reinforcement, is what might be called the lower range of technical education—that which produces the craftsman and the technician, and will make the peasant a more knowledgeable agriculturist. In the past, that aspect has suffered very largely for reasons similar to those that have caused it to suffer in this country.
We have been great pioneers here of university education because we were fairly clear about the principles on which to establish universities and university education. We have been a good deal less clear about the principles governing technical education, higher and lower. As a result, we tended to go much further ahead in the Colonies, as they were, in developing university education, tending to mirror our own conception, whether it was correct or not, and have tended to be slower with higher technical education, and slowest of all with lower technical education.
Professor Arthur Lewis is only one of a very large number of writers who have recently stressed the absolute necessity of giving the man who tills the soil far greater scientific knowledge of his job; not necessarily turning him into a professional agriculturist, but giving him the comparatively lower-grade technical knowledge that will make him, a good craftsman, at least. That side needs great strengthening, and I hope that some of the funds that we are now voting will find their way there—

Mr. J. Johnson: I agree with every word that my hon. Friend has said so far, but I think that he will agree that all the secondary, junior, intermediate and higher education falls down unless we have a supply of teachers. Therefore, the important thing is to spend money on teacher-training colleges.

Mr. MacPherson: I agree with my hon. Friend. I had intended to imply that, if I did not mention it specifically, when I concentrated on the key importance of secondary education as a producer. One gets candidates for teacher-training colleges only if one has the secondary schools. It is the old story of the hen and the egg, but we must have them both at the same time, and one after the other and the other after the one.
Another important aspect of secondary education is the provision of libraries. Quite rightly, we provide huge sums for university libraries. All our own experience in the country has shown that one of the best forms of expenditure on secondary education is that on libraries. The bigger and better the library, so far as it fits the needs of the secondary youngster, the better the youngster is likely to turn out in the end.
I am not an expert educationist, but anybody who has followed the subject for the last few years in this country will realise that opinion has turned more and more towards the value of improving and extending libraries in the secondary schools—largely because teachers are seeing the effects of having the youngsters surrounded by lots of books at that stage. The same would hold true, I am sure, in the schools in the under-developed territories. I should like to see the Colonial Secretary make a considerable drive

towards the provision of good libraries for the secondary schools, as well as for universities, and institutions of that rank.
I add to that the desirability of providing books in languages easily readable by the local people. There should be a good deal more translating into the local vernacular, but the provision of books, whether in or out of schools, will have a very considerable effect, if there are the beginnings of an educational background on which to base it, in improving the quality of education, and of citizenship.
Finally, I should like to refer to the way in which the Government are advised in these matters. They get plenty of advice on the university level from the Inter-University Council. They presumably get plenty of advice about higher technical colleges from the Council for Overseas Colleges of Arts and Technology. Neither of these bodies is particularly forthcoming in letting hon. Members know what advice they give. Our University Grants Committee produces its Report quinquennially, but it also produces an interim report every year, whereas the Inter-University Council does not. As for the other body, I think it is only this year intending to produce, in May or June, a report covering the last eight years.
This is not a very happy situation. We could do with a little more information here. Presumably, however, the Colonial Secretary gets advice from these bodies; on questions of secondary and primary education presumably he relies on the education authorities in the territories for advice. But what about the whole field of non-university technical and professional, semi-professional and sub-professional activity—the kind of education that can be given to youngsters after they have left school, whether at the end of a complete secondary course or earlier, who do not intend to go on to professional university courses?
There is a big gap here not only in advice to the Government, but in the knowledge on which to base that advice. There is need for either a survey or the establishment of a body parallel to these two higher bodies. At any rate, there is here a large subject about which information is lacking and about which, therefore, judgment and informed decisions must be very difficult to reach.
I see in the list of research projects very little relating to education. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman at least one educational topic on which research would probably be extremely helpful. That is the vexed question of what language one should teach in—whether to teach in the vernacular, whether to try to find a local common language or whether to teach in English. The French teach in French. We try to teach in the domestic language of the youngster. There are arguments for and against each of these. If the Colonial Secretary would consider including some educational projects in the list of research projects, I am sure that he would find one or two very practical and worth while.

6.23 p.m.

Mr. John Tilney (Liverpool, Waver-tree): I am glad to follow the hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson), especially as he has referred to education. I do not fully agree with him in wishing to have more lawyers in Africa. It seems to me that what Africa needs is more technicians and able administrators who are much more likely to form the basis of the wealth that Africa requires.
I agree with the remarks of the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson). If he and the hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs will glance at the pamphlet issued by the Conservative Commonwealth Council, known as "The Helping Hand", he will see that there is an immense need of teachers. Take Northern Nigeria as a whole, for example, where only 5 per cent. of the children are at school. The number of teachers should be multiplied by about 20 to deal with the whole child population which should be educated. This problem is so great that probably we as a nation cannot undertake our colonial responsibilities without help from outside. However, I will come to that point a little later.
The Ministry of Education could help in the seconding of teachers overseas and, in the teaching of medicine, I would particularly commend to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary the suggestion made to the Minister of Health that there might be proleptic appointments of those on the registrar grade who can go away for a year and a half to teach medicine and

then come back to a consultative post in this country. They might be extremely valuable teachers.
Like hon. Members in all quarters of the House, I welcome the Bill but I often wonder how many people are aware of the work done by the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund in different territories. I only wish that the knowledge that is held by officials and statesmen could permeate not only our critics overseas, in the United States and elsewhere, on colonialism, but also occasionally the actual indigenous people themselves who are frequently oblivious to the heavy burden on the British taxpayer in sending money which could be employed here or in wise investment elsewhere overseas. I am one of those who believe that no nation should be a member of the Commonwealth where the majority wish to leave, provided the minority is properly looked after. I would much rather have an expanding Commonwealth on a smaller but firm base, with people who are determined to accept the liabilities with the assets, the duties and the expenses with the revenue and emoluments.
This money which the House is voting is taken from the British taxpayer and from the saver, and I fear that owing to the actions of men like Dr. Banda, the ultimate financial reservoir to which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred may be called upon very much more than he thinks. The actions of people like Dr. Banda are not helping in any way the under-developed territories. He is becoming like Dr. Mossadeq was, and, as the effect of Dr. Mossadeq was to make people frightened of investing in many foreign territories, so what I fear is happening in Nyasaland today may scare many capitalists from investing in the under-developed parts of the Commonwealth.
But I welcome the Government to Government loans, and I think the House as a whole pays tribute to the work of the Secretary of State for the Colonies in deciding to make these loans available. I notice that paragraph 19 of the White Paper states:
In so far as expenditure financed from Exchequer loans involves the purchase of goods imported into the territory concerned, the availability of funds will not be tied by statute to United Kingdom exports.


That is very altruistic, but if that is so, it means that our unemployment will not be eased, nor will our surplus capacity possibly be used to the full.
In many ways I should have liked to see the repayment of some of the sterling balances. I know it can be said that the sterling balances can be used by any Colonial Territory that wants so to do, but many of them have invested—and this applies to public boards as well—in medium and long-dated Government stock which is now at a discount, and they are loth to sell that stock and incur a loss. I should like to see Her Majesty's Government lend money against British Government stock held by Colonies which is now at a discount, so that the territory concerned can immediately get the benefit of the funds which it does not want to realise, at a heavy discount and which will in the process of ten years or so return to par. That should be considered.
I also note, as did the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), that the terms of trade of many Colonies have recently deteriorated. I find myself in agreement with him in urging that what was discussed at the Montreal Conference should be looked at again; namely, the stabilisation of raw material prices, and some means of ironing out the peaks and troughs. I do not know whether this House knows that we imported into this country last year approximately the same amount of food and raw materials as we did in 1957, but that the cost was £290 million less.

Mr. Tomney: It was 15 per cent.

Mr. Tilney: Naturally, our exports suffered, and there are now pockets of unemployment, while some of our very good customers in the Commonwealth are unable to buy our goods. I hope action can be taken, preferably by the whole Western world, to stabilise raw material prices within the framework of the free market. There is no need to have a rigid floor or ceiling, but at least we could enable some of these territories to be able to budget ahead and be sure that they will have some revenue from which they can place orders.
There is. of course, the major problem of the emergent States, such as the West Indies or the very loyal and pro-Western Government of Sierra Leone. What is to

be done for territories like these, which will attain their independence and yet are hardly viable? What I believe the Western world wants is another great Colombo Plan, possibly for different regions, such as Africa, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will look at the heavy cost on some of these emerging States of, say, the Army. The cost that was borne by this country was virtually 100 per cent. while we were in control, and now these States will have to bear more and more of that cost, so much so that they will be very loth to keep up the Army and may even disband it, with all the possible dangers of Communism then taking charge.
I believe that it is the duty and in the interests of Western statesmen to support Africans and Asians who believe in our way of life. I think that it can be done in some measure in this Bill, but that this Bill only goes a portion of the way which we should like it to go. In the end, whatever my right hon. Friend says, it will be men as well as money that will count, and it is because that is so that I would appeal to certain governments, such as those of West Africa, to treat their own servants as well as some other Governments have done. It is much more easy to recruit first-class men for the services overseas if their predecessors have been wisely and well treated.
There are certain Governments, in West Africa particularly, which have not paid pensions as generous as those paid by the United Kingdom, and far less generous than those paid by other Governments in the Pacific and elsewhere. I hope that will be taken note of, because I believe that it would be to their benefit to do so. I also hope that it might be possible to adjust the British taxpayers' contribution to the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund in some way, so as to take account of that.
In the defence debate last week, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Head) said, among other things, that he thought that perhaps £5 million spent on education in Kenya might be more valuable than two Blue Streaks. In this ideological conflict in which the world is divided, when so much of Asia and Africa are not as yet committed, social and economic help are as vital for the safety of the West as are arms. The trouble is that both cost a


great deal of money, and we cannot have both, at least by ourselves. I therefore welcome what is said in this White Paper about obtaining help from outside sources, be it from Germany, the United States, or wherever we can find the money for undeveloped lands. There is no doubt, it seems to me, that spring has come to Asia and to Africa and that everywhere the natural growth, though up till now it has been unsuspected, is pushing up the bare earth which so many of us thought was permanently at rest. It is up to this House to see that that growth is not entangled by any thickets or bindweed, and I commend this Bill as one of the weapons of sound husbandry.

6.37 p.m.

Mr. Frank Tomney: This is the first time I have ventured to speak in a debate on colonial matters, and there are so many hares running that I do not know which one to chase.
I want to refer, first of all, to the closing remarks of the speech, which I thought an excellent one, of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan). In essence, he put a plea to the people of this country—the general taxpayers—to face up to their greater responsibilities in regard to the development of the Colonial Territories. It is a very noble sentiment, with which I am sure the whole House will concur, but it is a difficult one to put across to the public. We are all chasing our own particular hobby horses, and while that is true, if Colonial Governments could be assured of increased supplies from the British taxpayer within the next two decades, they would be in a far happier position than they are at the moment.
The operation of the open money market in London and the reduced borrowings adds point significantly to what my hon. Friend said about the economic policy of the Government and the high interest rates being charged. If it were possible, by appealing to the public conscience, either by direct or indirect taxation, for the taxpayers of this country to make up the difference in interest rates between what would be applicable at a lower rate of interest and what would be chargeable at market rates, that would be a great gesture, and

it is something which the country will have to consider.
This problem of colonial development, aid and welfare is a tremendous problem. The arguments in the debate today so far have concentrated upon Africa, and in Africa there is enormous mineral wealth, which is easily accessible and within easy means of transportation to the industrial centres of the West where there are the production and manufacturing techniques which can use it. I should think that, since the first find in the Kimberley diamond mine in 1870 until 1939, about £2,000 million has been poured into Africa, and the extent of the development that has taken place since then is shown by the fact that in one decade since the war, that amount of money has been spent in railways, transportation, smelting plants, engineering works, office blocks, schools, roads, irrigation works, claims, sewerage schemes and so forth.
The position of Africa is paramount in relation to the rest of our Colonial Territories. It is in Africa that the feeling of nationalism is springing to life more than anywhere else. It is this territory which finds itself so rich in mineral wealth and it is in this territory also that the aspirations to share in that wealth are greatest. Africa has always had links with the West, has always followed Western thought and language, be it French or English, adapting our customs and modes of government to itself. It is in Africa where the greatest success can be achieved and where the fight will finally be won which will determine what form of government is followed in South-East Asia, the West Indies, and the other dependent territories. This is why it is so important that we should do the right things in Africa, at the right time, and through the right people, that is, of course, the native, indigenous population.
Since the beginning of the century, black Africa has depended upon Europe for its capital development. It has depended upon Western techniques, upon Western managers and scientists and Western forms of government for its development. The fact must be faced that, as colonialism ends, subvention will end. Then what will happen? A plea has been advanced today that the formation of special Commonwealth loans for development as one answer to the problem. It is significant that, at the Montreal


Conference last year, the idea of a development bank for the Commonwealth was blocked. Every country does not feel it incumbent upon itself to share the responsibility which Great Britain has taken alone during the past 60 or 80 years. It is important that we should all share this responsibility.
This is no longer just our problem. The British public and the British taxpayer has faced it nobly. I said a few months ago that nationalism in all its forms—I hope, for the betterment of the people concerned—is now rising. But the concentration of political leadership, thought and knowledge is in only a very few men, men who have been trained in Western institutions and who follow Western ways. It is upon them that the responsibility rests of seeing that the people they represent follow the ideas and democratic systems which we cherish in this country. It is upon Dr. Nkrumah, Mr. Owolowu, Mr. Tom Mboya. Mr. Azikwe and Mr. Nehru that the great responsibility rests. They are leaders of what are now political freedom movements. While they may at the moment be able to command obedience, is there any certainty that they will in the future be able to command allegiance?
The British people and the British House of Commons, in their respect for democratic institutions and their desire to see the peoples of the backward nations lifted up, must ensure that other politicians and people of the same colour but with other ambitions do not come along afterwards. Will the peoples of the backward nations, when they have some government institutions, establish institutions which we know as democratic? Let us face it. It has not happened in Ghana as it should. Ghana has an authoritarian government. They have tolerated opposition, but the Constitution of Ghana is worthy of study. It was tailor-made for Dr. Nkrumah, and could lead to a Communist dictatorship.
It has not escaped my notice that the Soviet Government are prepared to establish in Africa the largest embassy outside Cairo. This would be important in every single aspect of African affairs. These are the responsibilities which the African leaders must bear. It is true that Dr. Nkrumah has retained for the moment European officials to help him in government. The need for them will remain

until such time as the African native is educated and trained in the arts of government.
The coloured boy in the hotels of Nairobi who takes one to the top floor in the lift looks at a white man in his lift and sees an inscrutable face behind which are locked a knowledge of modern mechanics, electronics, science and technology, but that coloured boy pressing the buttons to operate the lift knows now, for the first time, that it is possible for him to become a Minister, or even Prime Minister, in his own country. This is the growing temper which we must remember in considering our responsibility. A great obligation is placed upon those who are known as the white settlers of Africa; there must be closer integration, greater mixing, and a greater share of responsibility. Time is short. Although it is easy to chant "Freedom", it is another thing to secure it, anchor it, and make it safe.
In the White Paper, although I find that the application of Exchequer grants overall is more or less balanced among the needs of the territories for higher education, medicine, nutrition, land settlement, irrigation and so forth, there is one serious omission. I refer to the amount of money spent on the training of an overseas civil service. Upon the training of the native civil service will depend the success of native governments.
One country, a former dependent territory, which, by virtue of its civil service, should have succeeded beyond all others is India. Admittedly, the problems of India in population, religion, language and so forth are greater than those of any other part of the world, but it is nonetheless true that we left behind in India a trained Indian Civil Service modelled on British Civil Service institutions. Yet the story in India during the last five years has been a story of reducing finances and an ever-worsening rundown in the national economy. India has constantly called upon the World Bank and upon this country for building up her economy. India is a country which has always laid political stress on the warship of one particular person. Once it was Ghandi; now it is Nehru. As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney), I think, was trying to emphasise, India can become an easy prey to totalitarian government once its democratic


institutions break down. It is significant that the political party which came second in India with, I think, 38 per cent. of the total votes at the last election, was the Communist party, the party which has already established a government in Kerala in India.
Politicians and businessmen must keep their calculations within a framework of understanding. If I may express it in this way, the eyes of the backward peoples of the world are now looking to the light of foreign development, and their thoughts are turning to the framework of institutions which they will build up which will determine not only their eventual success but ours also, for we rely upon them as much as, if not more than, they rely upon us.
I should like to see extensive guarantees entered into for the next twenty years. The years 1956 and 1957, with the rundown in world economy, clearly showed the situation with which primary producing countries could be faced. There was a 15 per cent. drop—the hon. Member for Wavertree gave the figures—in net income of primary producing countries due to the fall in Western activity. It may be that with the division of people throughout the world the advanced manufacturing techniques of Western civilisation are more than attuned to the markets available for them. If we were able to extend unlimited credit to China, for instance, the position might be different, but we live in a capitalist society and interest rates and banking institutions do not work in that way.
For any country in Africa to succeed as a progressive economic, viable unit, it would have to devote at least 15 per cent. of its national income to productive investment to take charge of advancing population, developing schemes, new industries, and so on. So far as I am able to ascertain, those figures are not forthcoming or are not available. I think that the figure for West Africa is 8 per cent. and 12 per cent. for Kenya, Uganda, Nyasaland and Tanganyika. Ninety per cent. of their produce is agricultural and exportable and is liable at any time to the fluctuations of world markets should demand fall. The two Rhodesias, where the climate is favourable to white settlement and where mineral wealth is in

abundance, have a 25 per cent. national income. There is a tremendous future both for us and for Africans, given time, guidance and wisdom.
It would be tragic for historians in future to record that the West, at its moment of great supremacy in the arts of Government, industry and science, failed in its obligations to the backward people. We should be failing ourselves. The groundwork and framework have been laid. The mind boggles at the extent of wealth that could be developed. Let us consider, for instance, the Kariba Dam project and what the 600 million kilowatt capacity could do, and also the Central African Federation's plans to spend £120 million on road development and £30 million on transport. There is also the projected scheme for the Lower Congo, the Inga scheme, which at the moment is only a blueprint and which is expected to produce 1·6 million kilowatts by 1964.
When one realises that the eventual production of electrical schemes of that sort is in the order of 40 per cent. of the total kilowatt capacity of the United States and Canada, one gets some idea of the terrific potential that exists on the continent of Africa. The native of Africa, the man who lives there and the man whose country it is, has a share in this. At the same time, we must talk with his politicians, who are now emerging. I only hope that we can find a way to lock together their future and genuine ambitions and the fate of the Western world.

6.56 p.m.

Mr. Michael Clark Hutchison: I hope that the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney) will forgive me if I do not follow him exactly in his interesting speech, because I want to concentrate on some rather narrower points.
I imagine that every hon. Member welcomes the Bill in that it makes more money available to the colonial peoples. However, I do not know whether we are all so satisfied on the question of priorities. Are we quite certain that the money is being allocated to Colonies in the correct order and that, when it gets to the Colonies, the most necessary schemes are being undertaken? When I


was in the Colonial Service in Aden, it seemed to me that applications for colonial development and welfare funds, when they reached the Colonial Office, became a sort of lottery. If there was great pressure from one Colony, it might receive the money, but there was no certainty.
I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State would say what is the set-up in the Colonial Office and whether there is a commission which studies the needs of all Colonies, or whether it is left to one small Department? I should like to know what the system is.
In the Colonies themselves—I have direct experience of Aden—it was a very fortuitous matter. Perhaps a very able and active departmental head who pressed a scheme received the money for it, but an equally able but, perhaps, less imaginative head of department would not get money for his scheme. I should like my hon. Friend to ensure that there is in every Colony a body, perhaps under the Governor or Chief Secretary, which studies these matters and plans ahead. I have no objection to Parliament voting great sums. I am all for that, in this connection, but I think that we should be absolutely certain that the money is spent in the most valuable and productive way possible.
There have been some developments in Aden recently which reflect great credit on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I refer to the Federation of the Protectorate Rulers. I hope that in any future allocations of moneys the Aden Government and, indeed, the Colonial Office will ensure that these rulers are taken into their confidence so that they can give their advice and opinions on how the moneys should be spent in their areas and what the priorities should be. This is very essential.
The Western protectorate has been through some extremely difficult times recently and I believe that it is only by our undertaking firm military action and also our willingness to help that very barren territory with finance for development which has enabled these rulers to stay with us and to show hostility to the Yemen. It is vital that they should know what is in our minds and how we shall proceed in future.
I notice from the White Paper that the amount spent and allocated for broadcasting in Aden is comparatively small—about £50,000. That is not nearly enough. I do not know whether hon. Members realise that some very formidable propaganda against us and our way of life goes out from Cairo daily in Arabic and Swahili. This adverse hostile propaganda reaches the ears of perhaps 12 million people daily. This is very serious. There is, however, an answer if we use our imagination and if the territories—say, Somaliland, Kenya and Aden—get together. It is to introduce T.V. I believe that if that were done over a wide area, and done all at one time, we could cut the ground from under the feet of Nasser and regain the initiative.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will consider this matter and discuss with the Governors of the territories concerned and with the B.B.C. and other interested parties the possibility of introducing television soon in that part of the world.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. Robert Edwards: I have listened to the debate with great interest. I am sure that we all support the Bill, because it increases our assistance to the Commonwealth and the Colonial Territories, that need this assistance so greatly.
I wish, however, to take up a point made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. M. Clark Hutchison). The hon. Member made a plea for more expenditure on propaganda, with particular reference to Aden, because he feels that it is necessary for us to counter the propaganda of Nasser from Cairo. I remember having a broadcast from Cairo translated to me. I heard to my astonishment a reference to what had happened in Bahrein, a little island sheikdom in the Persian Gulf. Cairo was referring to the Tolpuddle Martyrs of Arabia, where two trade unionists in Bahrein had been deported for fourteen years and shipped in a British battleship to St. Helena, where they are vegetating to this day.
The political mistakes that we make give Nasser propaganda against us and we cannot counter this propaganda merely by increasing our expenditure. We should counter it by making our peace with the legitimate demands of the peoples in the


Colonial Territories for freedom. That is how we can win the battle for human freedom and not by an extra few thousand pounds in broadcasting from Aden to counter the broadcasts from Cairo.
Whether we like it or not, a great social revolution is sweeping the world. All the references to double-talk and the harm that honest political men cause in Africa in the speeches they make there do not deal with the fundamental problem which we must face that in the great continent of Africa there are today nine independent African States. We are dealing with a problem that we have never had to deal with before. The Africans in the small territories are no longer alone. They are wanting to make union with their African brothers in nine independent territories. It may be said that they want to ring the changes too quickly. Whether we think this or not, the Africans do not think so and, after all, it is their continent, not ours.
We cannot stop this revolution. African people are demanding a place in the sun. They are demanding the right to run their country in their own way and they are demanding self-government. If there is double-talk in this House, it is not from this side. The double-talk comes from those who pay lip-service to self-government and freedom, but, who, by their actions, help to destroy it. By so doing, they create unnecessary hostility for this country.
There have been references to Ghana. I was in Ghana just before Christmas, when it was my privilege to attend the great African Congress in Accra. I was agreeably surprised at the moderation of those African people, many of whom were having to operate under illegal conditions because the right to organise in trade unions, the right to run their own newspapers and the right to organise political parties were denied to them. They spoke, however, with extreme moderation and rejected every attempt to commit the conference to a policy of violence.
These millions of African people who are claiming their legitimate right to run their own countries are so far uncommitted. There are, however, a great many people who want to commit them to totalitarian ideas. If we do not understand the rights of these people and help them along the road to

peaceful revolution, they will go underground and achieve their emancipation by violence. All history, both ancient and modern, should have taught us that simple lesson.
There was a delegation of seven Russians at the Accra Conference. There were two delegates who made the long journey from China. There were five delegates from East Germany. There was a message from Khrushchev and one from Vice-President Nixon of America, but there was no message from the Colonial Office. There was no message from Britain. We, who have the greatest stake in Africa, ignored the conference and swept it away with a smile as if it did not matter. Every African State was represented.

Mr. J. Johnson: Is it not a fact that despite what my hon. Friend is saying about the lack of initiative shown by the Colonial Office to the Accra Conference, the Ghana Government had sufficient good will to defer the welcome to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association visit until our delegation arrived and kept the Soviet delegation waiting for their official welcome?

Mr. Edwards: That is quite true. The Chairman did not announce the Russian delegation until the British Members of Parliament had arrived. That is worthy of note, because in spite of the hostile Press that the conference received, it is indicative that the Africans want to be on our side, or, at least, want to be neutral concerning the future of power politics.
Recently, it was my privilege to visit Sierra Leone, the most loyal Colony in the whole of Africa and one of the poorest and most backward. The annual income per person in Sierra Leone is less than £20. The people's living standards are fifteen times lower than ours and we have been in control of this territory since 1789. Only one child in seven has any opportunity for primary education and there are vast areas of the protectorate which do not have a primary school. There are great areas without telephone services and hard roads.
If any country in Africa or any part of our Colonial Territories needs assistance, it is Sierra Leone. The people there are happy and lovable, without violent organisations at all, and moving slowly towards self-government, making no


impossible demands upon us, trying to develop their democratic institutions based on the democracy of the West, with their Parliament and their developing municipalities. But what little assistance they get from us.
I went to an area where they are producing chrome from a chrome mine. There is a population of about 800 people dependent entirely on that mine, and 300 workers are engaged directly in the digging of chrome. At any time now that mine may close down because it cannot compete with cheap chrome going into the country from the Philippines. Surely we have to develop a method of assisting an industry like that. Its closure would shatter the living standards not only of the workers directly employed in the mine, but of the whole community which has grown around this important industrial activity of chrome mining.
There is not a decent hotel in the whole of Sierra Leone. They need a new hotel for the visit of the Queen. They were promised a new hotel, but it is very doubtful whether that hotel will be built in time. It seems a very frivolous thing to talk in terms of an hotel when there is a shortage of primary education and when there is a shortage of hospitals. Nevertheless, it seems a very sad state of affairs when British civil servants have to accommodate official Parliamentary delegations in their homes and the delegations have to be split up because there is a complete lack of adequate accommodation.
Here is an investment which cries aloud for some quick decision. The people need houses. We build houses in Trinidad, through our colonial development funds, for purchase. We lend money. We have organised a building society and we have loaned money to the building society to build houses for sale. The miserable shanties of the people in Freetown, considering how long we have been there, make a very sad commentary on the support we give to our most loyal of peoples.
I noticed in Sierra Leone one vital development which, I think, is tremendously important and which should be supported very substantially by this Parliament. It is a development which does not need vast sums of money; just a few strategic loans for colleges and schools. That is the development of the producer co-operatives.
In 1950, there were about 29 co-operative societies in Sierra Leone. This cooperative organisation of producer farmers growing cocoa, coffee and rice, these credit co-operative societies, have grown in the last eight years. Since 1950 the development has been threefold, both in membership and in turnover, and there are over 300 co-operative societies in Sierra Leone today. It is very inspiring to find in all these villages these good, hard-working co-operative farmers who in a very short period of time have organised themselves to the point where 35 per cent. of the cocoa and coffee crop of Sierra Leone is now organised by them.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Kirk-dale (Mr. N. Pannell) and I visited a great swampland where 1,800 acres previously of swamp had been allocated to co-operative rice farmers. They were cultivating this land which had never grown anything but reeds before, and they were producing their own rice. This seems to me a very inspiring development, because it answers one of the political problems which are troubling us in this debate, political problems which have been mentioned time and time again in the short debate we have had so far.
The development of voluntary cooperative organisations solves one of the problems of democracy. It shows the simple African farmers that by their own voluntary activities, by mutual aid, they can build up an organisation of their own and run it themselves, run it in their own village, run it in their own region, and run it in their own country. It shows them what democracy really means, and democracy means doing something for oneself and not allowing a superman to do the job. The more we are able to encourage African farmers along the road of self-help and mutual aid through cooperative farming the more we can help to solve this great political dilemma of our times.
It seems to me fantastic that in our Western world, and particularly in our country, the metropolis of a great Commonwealth, a great colonial area spread all over the world, in this age of automation and electronics and nuclear energy and H-bombs, of all this tremendous power which mankind now has at its disposal, as we are moving into an era of superabundance, we have not yet found the proper technique of making possible


the flow of our abundance into these undeveloped or underdeveloped areas which exist in such deplorable conditions, where poverty is almost indescribable. It seems to me that we have got to approach this problem in a much more majestic way than ever we have done in the past.
I once tried an experiment in my trade union. The members of my union are characteristic of trade unionists all over this country. It was suggested to me that merely passing resolutions about aid to underdeveloped areas was not enough. I was asked to produce a plan whereby the chemical workers could give practical assistance to underdeveloped areas in Africa, and I produced a plan, and to my amazement that plan was carried overwhelmingly by all the members of my union. The only people who voted against it were a handful of Communists.
That plan was based on the deduction of 6d. per week out of every £1 earned by the members of my union. They agreed to that. They said they were willing to accept deductions at source amounting to 6d. out of every £1 they earned every week, to be allocated for colonial development, as long as the money could be withdrawn at the age of 65 and carried the normal investment rate they got from the Post Office.
It seems to me that this is the kind of approach to which the British workers will respond. If we could obtain a response of that nature from the people of this country working in industry based on 6d. in the £ per week, we should have an income of over £250 million a year. That sum would be withdrawn from purchasing power. It would help to halt inflation and bring prices down, and it would provide a constant flow of capital investment into all the areas which need this capital. It might be thought that this is a fantastic idea, but it is not. It has been tried in one union, the Chemical Workers' Union. At its annual conference it accepted it; its members are willing to co-operate on the basis of such a plan with colleagues in other trade unions.
This is a modest idea but it is an example of the kind of fundamental approach which we need in this age of challenge to deal with the vast problem of poverty and misery and underdevelopment which characterises great areas of

the world. In so far as the Bill is a modest attempt to increase our contribution to colonial development, it must have our support, but it seems to me a very minor method of dealing with a vast problem which can be solved only by much more majestic thinking than we have done up to now.

7.22 p.m.

Sir John Barlow: I do not propose to follow the hon. Member for Bilston (Mr. R. Edwards) very closely in his remarks. He was rather critical of the Government's policy in colonial development in the past, and he described as a sad commentary upon it some poverty-stricken areas in Africa where he said we had not contributed enough. I have agreed with so much that has been said on the other side of the House today that I do not wish in any way to be provocative, but I am delighted to see the interest now taken by hon. Members opposite and the change of attitude on their part towards the Colonies and the Dominions which has come about in the last ten or fifteen years. It is astonishing how their outlook towards responsibility for the wellbeing and development of the Colonies has changed. I appreciate that enormously, but when they criticise the Government side of the House and speak of a sad commentary on our record they should remember their responsibility in the past.
As a result of the increase in the wave of nationalism which is sweeping Africa and the whole world, there are now probably more intractable problems connected with the Colonies than there have ever been before. Everything is changing rapidly, and I do not envy my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary in the tremendous problems which face him from day to day. They are individual, diverse and of frightful importance. I appreciate enormously that in the present holder of thy: office we have a man of such vigour and ability to tackle these problems in the way he does. I do not say that I agree with everything my right hon. Friend does, but I admire the way in which he is tackling these terrific problems.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) was rather critical of the amount of loans raised in the City of London for colonial development. I urge the hon. Member to remember that


large numbers of profitable and responsible companies, over the centuries, have been developing in the Colonies and many of them have been ploughing back substantial amounts of profit for further development there. It may be said that that money has been used to produce more copper in Northern Rhodesia and more rubber in Malaya, but if profits are ploughed back wisely they are bound to help a territory enormously. It is probably as good if not a better way of doing it than sending the same amount of money out from the City of London for capital development. It is infinitely better to have profits ploughed back by people who know these territories and the difficulties of development than that the Government should handle the matter through the Colonial Development Corporation or the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund organisation.
The difficulties in the Colonies are so great and diverse that development can be handled infinitely better by private enterprise than by Government agencies, but I welcome the Bill because by means of it we are arranging to spend vast sums on development which is not appropriate to private enterprise—on roads, education, electricity supplies, and all kinds of things which the Government can and should do. But I urge the Colonial Secretary to be very certain that this money is used to the best advantage. I can think of some occasions when loans of this kind have not been used in the best possible way. We know that it is so difficult to spare sufficient money for colonial and Commonwealth development that we should not stand aside and watch it being spent unwisely. In this context I urge the Colonial Secretary to think particularly of Africa.
Attention has been drawn to the great dependence of certain Colonies on one or two commodities. The same applies to certain Commonwealth countries. We think of Ceylon as being dependent on tea, Malaya on rubber and tin, and Australia on wool and meat. Many Colonies are in the same predicament. All these countries suffer very severely when there is a fall in commodity prices. I know that there are difficulties in stabilising prices. There have been many failures when it has been attempted in the past, but in view of its tremendous value if it were successful I urge the Colonial

Secretary to investigate the matter again. Some schemes have worked very well, and, I admit, some have been deplorable, but the alternative for these countries of being so dependent on one or two commodities is the development of secondary industries themselves. Usually, that is very uneconomic.
I have visited a number of Colonies and parts of the Commonwealth. One sees a large and emerging Colony anxious to be much more self-supporting than it is. Because it knows the risk of relying solely on one or two commodities, it goes to great lengths to encourage small industries and to diversify agricultural production, neither of which is so efficient and economical as the primary industry on which the country has so largely rested. I can see their predicament. If a country relies entirely on one or two commodities, it knows the risks of a fluctuating market and must make some endeavour to find an alternative industry. If we can help these Colonies or emerging countries to find some method of stabilising the one or two commodities which they can produce economically, that would prove of far greater help than lending them vast amounts of money to be used on development. Any such stabilisation scheme would require a fair amount of capital. As I have said, I realise the difficulties, but I do not think that they are insuperable; and the advantage would be so great that it is worth while trying to achieve something in this direction.
While travelling in the East in recent months one has observed the Russian tentacles appearing where they have never appeared before. In the last ten years one has heard so much about Russian expenditure on armament for the cold war, but I regard an economic war as far more dangerous than any shooting war with Russia. Because of her comparatively low standard of living, Russia has accumulated very great wealth. There is a great deal of Government trading which results in large profits being made. When Russia decides to enter a market or deal in a commodity, prices are entirely a matter apart. Should she decide on a policy, she possesses such wealth, because so much of the cream has been skimmed from her economy, that economically she can do absolutely anything that she wishes.
I consider the very strange arrangements which have been made with South-East Asia countries to be far more dangerous than the possibilities of a fighting war. So many of these comparatively small emerging countries seem to think that a barter arrangement is the best, the most economic and the most modern way of doing business. Some of them get tied up in the most extraordinary agreements. I do not propose to tell the House about such arrangements this evening, but in travelling in the East one comes across fantastic contracts into which one would not expect any reasonable man to enter. But the Russians and the Chinese are persuading these countries to do those extraordinary things and it is up to us to help those countries in a different direction.
We must either pump more capital into them—provided that it will be used well—or perhaps it might be advisable to go to the extent of entering into barter arrangements with them, although I do not like such a procedure except in cases of absolute necessity. The fact is abundantly clear, however, that Russia is trying to obtain an economic stranglehold on many of these new and emerging countries: sometimes by buying up their commodities and then forcing those commodities on to the market at a very embarrassing time. I urge the Colonial Secretary to watch these new arrangements very carefully.
It has been said by hon. Members opposite, and I agree, that we have a great obligation to these backward people for whom we have been largely responsible for centuries. We have helped the backward peoples of the world far more than any other country has done, and we should not forget that. When Russia or any other country makes glib offers of great amounts of money it is very important that the people of those countries to whom such offers are made, and who have benefited in the past from the good Government of this country and from our help, should remember what we have done for them during the last century.
We still have obligations to these people. I hope that the wave of nationalism which is sweeping across the world will not blind them to what we have done in the past. We want to help the people of

these emerging countries. The danger is that a few educated people—Africans, it may be—who desire independence, but have not the backing of a sufficient number of educated people, may prove a great danger both to themselves and to the world. We shall have to help them forward but we must not proceed too fast, otherwise it may prove embarrassing for them.
It is up to hon. Members on both sides of the House to translate to the electorate of this country the great obligations which we have to the people of these emerging countries. I was delighted to hear the hon. Member for Bilston say that his trade union had agreed to make some contribution by way of a loan. I do not think that the scheme outlined by the hon. Member would be practicable, but suggestions of that kind are immensely valuable. If we can get the people of this country to understand their responsibilities to people overseas, and if we can explain to them the advantages which will accure to them and to the Commonwealth in the future; if we can get our people to understand that and to act on it, we shall have gone a long way to solving many of the great and intractable problems which face the Colonial Secretary today.

7.36 p.m.

Mr. Cledwyn Hughes: I agree with a good deal of what has been said by the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Sir J. Barlow) although I think he was rather extreme in his view of the rôle that private enterprise should play in our Colonial Territories. Certainly private enterprise has an important part to play, but we must not forget that there are areas where, if there is to be industrial expansion at all, it must be through Government intervention, either directly or through the Colonial Development Corporation.
The Colonial Secretary referred to the importance of this colonial development and welfare legislation as applied to fairly small territories. I think he mentioned areas with a population of 50,000 or less. I wish to discuss the application of the Bill to that kind of territory and in particular to one small Colonial Territory in which I have a special interest because I visited St. Helena for a short time during last year. Happily, there are no acute constitutional difficulties in


St. Helena which might give rise to violence. Nevertheless, the island has its great problems and it is a microcosm of the difficulties facing us in larger Colonies. The island is only 47 square miles in area and it has a population of less than 5,000. But its size, and the fact that its people are enduringly loyal to this country, is no excuse or reason for treating its problems lightly.
I found that the money which has been made available since 1947 from colonial development and welfare funds has been tremendously appreciated by the inhabitants of St. Helena. The total sum, since 1945, including current schemes, amounts to £417,000—not £500,000 as the Under-Secretary of State said in the debate on St. Helena on 8th December.
Part of this has been spent on a new general hospital, a mental hospital, and an old people's home. Some of it went on new houses and roads. That was money well spent. But out of £172,000 provided for the period 1955–60, £82,000 has been set aside for agriculture and afforestation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) mentioned the importance of food production this afternoon. This is a matter of special importance in St. Helena. Expenditure on agriculture and forestry has left very little for development in other directions, notably on housing. Most of the £82,000 set aside for agricultural development has been spent on land reclamation, irrigation and reafforestation. While one naturally agrees that these are matters of first importance, nevertheless little money is left to settle people on the land and to purchase machinery, seeds and stock.
There is an acute Shortage of green vegetables and meat in St. Helena at the present time. As the Under-Secretary of State well knows, very many young men are out of work and have no prospect of work. They would gladly go on the land if they were suitably encouraged. This would be a sensible course where there are so many unemployed and no prospects of employment. It should also be borne in mind that of the area of 47 square miles only one-third is cultivable. I hope that the Colonial Office will give this matter very careful thought when allocating money under the Bill. As I said in this House on the last occasion

St. Helena was debated, the needs of the people there are precisely the same as our own. They are people of British stock, British outlook and British requirements, but they seldom, if ever, eat meat, cheese, eggs or butter, and seldom drink milk. If there should be a serious epidemic on that island these food deficiencies would have very grave consequences indeed.
Let me give one example. On 12th February, I asked the hon. Gentleman to give details of meals provided for school children on the island. He replied:
Meals are provided for just over 200 out of St. Helena's 526 school children.
That was an error on the part of the Under-Secretary of State, because there are 1,270 school children in St. Helena. He was badly briefed. Perhaps he will look it up again. He said that the meals served in the schools
consist of three slices of bread with margarine, meat extract and cheese, and tomatoes and fruit when available. In addition, there is a general distribution of reconstituted milk, and fish-oil capsules."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th February, 1959; Vol. 599, c. 224]
The latter were provided by U.N.I.C.E.F. When I was at St. Helena the children were eating thick slices of bread and margarine and very little else.
Home-produced food is therefore a primary need on that island. I hope that the Colonial Office will do something about it as a matter of urgency. Having been there, I am acutely concerned about the health of the children and the old people. I will give the House another example of the dietary of an old person on St. Helena. This is taken from the Report for 1957 of the Social Welfare Officer of the island.
It is the case of a widow of 73 who lives alone in Jamestown. She owns a small, dilapidated house and lives in it. She gets 5s. per week relief from the Government. 'This is what she lives on in a week: two loaves of bread at 6d. a loaf; 1½ lbs. of sugar, at 8d. a lb.; 2 ounces of tea; a quarter of a pound of butter; two mackerel; a quarter of a gallon of potatoes; half a pound of lard; 2 ounces of salt; one box of matches, and two bottles of paraffin at 6½d. a bottle. The needs of that old lady are equal to the needs of any old lady of 73 in this country, yet she has to subsist on that diet. Surely the money under the Bill


could be used to improve conditions of life of old people on the island. I can assure hon. Members that such help would be tremendously appreciated by everyone who lives there.
I mentioned housing. I found when I was there that housing conditions are utterly appalling. Of the grant for 1955–60, £10,000 has been set aside for housing, but the sum is inadequate as I am sure the Under-Secretary of State would agree if he went into the situation carefully. I hope that a much larger sum will be made available as the result of the Bill. The Social Welfare Officer said in his 1957 Report on the houses:
I visited homes, and regularly found overcrowded conditions, leaking roofs, crumbling walls and splintered boxwood flooring infested with white ants.
I went round several of the houses in the island, and those were the conditions that I found. The Colonial Office should improve housing conditions in St. Helena.
I estimated that 277 families, each with two or more children, were living in houses with three rooms or less, and the condition of those houses was largely what I have described. The people are clean and proud. They want better houses and they would appreciate bathroom facilities in them. Surely we can do better than £10,000 in five years.
I turn to education, to which many hon. Members have referred in this debate. The provision of new schools in St. Helena is good but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) asked, what is the use of a new school if we have not sufficient teachers? There are almost no trained teachers in St. Helena. Out of 68 teachers there, I think there are two trained teachers, apart from the education officer. More teachers are the great need at the present time. Money is provided out of colonial development and welfare funds for the training of one island teacher per year in the United Kingdom. That is, of course, excellent but the major drawback is that when these teachers leave the island they must sign a declaration in which they agree to serve the Government of St. Helena for three years for the following salaries: men £180, rising by increments of £10 a year to £250; women £160, rising by similar increments to £230 a year. Therefore, a St. Helenian teacher who has

been trained in this country and returns to St. Helena is paid a salary which is substantially less than the salary paid to a British teacher there. The disparity is far too great. These teachers are robbed of the incentive to return to the service of their community.
In passing, I may mention for the sake of illustration, that the salary paid to those trained St. Helenian teachers on their return to the island is equivalent to the transport allowance paid to Colonial officials on the island. How can we expect those St. Helenian teachers to return and give service to their community? I believe the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) mentioned the importance of a scheme of secondment from this country to the Colony. A great contribution could be made if the Education Department of the Colonial Office were to arrange for teachers from this country to serve in the Colonies for periods of about 18 months. It might be that three years in a remote Colony like St. Helena would be rather too long. If proper inducements were given and trained teachers were canvassed through the different education authorities of this country, many young teachers would volunteer for service.
In this Colony the intelligence of the children is extremely high. It is at least as high as the average in this country. There are more than 1,200 children who have no opportunity at all for further education. I went around the schools and found the children extremely intelligent, yet I found that when they leave school at the age of 14 they have no future ahead of them. These are not an indigenous people in the sense that African people are indigenous, for, when we colonised the island in 1659, there was no one living there. We have a special responsibility to these people. It is our duty to give them better opportunities. In answer to a Question I asked on 12th February the Under-Secretary said that for teachers:
Consideration is being given to intensive in-service training."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 12th February. 1959; Vol. 599, c. 224.]
This may well be of help but it is really not an answer to the problem, as we know from long experience in this country.
The people of St. Helena should also have a greater voice in their own affairs.


If a Bill of this kind is to achieve complete success, there must be co-operation between this Government and the people of the areas which receive the subventions. I have suggested to the Colonial Secretary, for example, that there should be elections to the Advisory Council in St. Helena. In all conscience, that is a modest proposal. The colonial officials in St. Helena know that well. I travelled the island thoroughly. I spoke to the people, and I think I got to know them better in five weeks than many of the colonial officials have done in two or three years.
I am satisfied beyond any doubt at all that the people of St. Helena desire the right to vote. The Under-Secretary has made it clear that the Colonial Office thinks otherwise. Why is the Colonial Secretary so adamant about this? Have not the lessons of recent history been learned? Is it the case that riots must precede progress? Here is a people, intelligent and loyal to this country, asking for an elementary right which is refused by the Colonial Office. I strongly advise the Government to look at the question again. They have all to gain and nothing to lose by so doing.
I welcome the Bill and hope it will have a speedy passage through all its stages. I hope at the same time that the problems of this small, remote island—which so often are forgotten, probably because there are more acute problems in the larger territories—and the elementary rights of these people will be recognised without further delay.

7.56 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Russell: I am sorry that I am not in a position to follow the hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. C, Hughes) in his most interesting account of his visit to St. Helena. I shall pick up only one point he made. If I heard him aright, he said that the people of St. Helena appreciated the help which has been given. That is very welcome news. I wish it could be said of all the territories to which we have given and are giving help.
I have in mind a country much nearer to us, Malta, whose former Prime Minister seems to be one of the most unappreciative persons on the face of the earth. He seems to have caused the Secretary of State for the Colonies more difficulties

than any other politician in the Commonwealth. I only hope that the people of Malta themselves are much more grateful than, it would appear from his statements and attitude, is Mr. Mintoff.
I wish to congratulate my right hon. Friend on producing this very comprehensive White Paper. It may be that since I have been in this House I have not discovered all the White Papers on colonial development and welfare which have been issued—although I know that reference is made to the subject and statistics are given every year in the Annual Report of the Colonial Office—but this White Paper seems to put things much more clearly and to give statistics in a very neat and comprehensive table better than anything else I have seen. What is more, the statistics are comprehensive for the whole period of the twelve years, virtually since the war, and I am sure they will be very useful in giving us information quickly, information which. I hope will not be disputed or contradicted in subsequent documents. When trying to glean information from statistics, whether about the Colonies or any other phase of political life, one so often finds that statistics given one year are contradicted by those produced subsequently. That makes comparison difficult. I hope that this document is not only comprehensive but more or less permanent.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. M. Clark Hutchison) referred to the need for more broadcasting, particularly to Aden. That is necessary almost everywhere, but I see from the table at the back of the document that in the last twelve years we have spent about £1,750,000 over the whole Colonial Territories in broadcasting, films and public information, out of a total of £155 million. That seems a very small amount to spend on this most important subject. Despite what is said by the hon. Member for Bilston (Mr. R. Edwards), I am sure that countering adverse propaganda from Cairo Radio and putting forward positive information which is not countering anyone's propaganda, is vital. Although I have not examined the statistics given for the future. I hope the proportion which is to go to this very important service will be greater in the next five years than it has been in the last twelve.
Mention has been made of housing. The figure is £5·6 million for the last twelve


years. Several hon. Members opposite have stressed the importance of education. The figure in that case is £28 million. I cannot help feeling that in order to provide happy conditions our first concern should be to improve housing. I know from my visit to the West Indies three years ago how great was the need for better housing there at that time. It is probably still as great to a large extent in that part of the world, and I hope that the proportion of this money which is spent on housing will be stepped up.
In that connection, I wonder how much has been done by private enterprise in providing housing in the Colonial Territories. I know that this is a matter in which I shall not carry hon. Members opposite with me, but it is private enterprise in this country which has broken the back of the housing shortage in the last ten years, and I wonder whether more use cannot be made of it in the Colonies.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) referred to the paragraph in the White Paper about funds which are used for the purchase of goods not being tied to United Kingdom exports. He mentioned that as being a very altruistic way of doing things. I entirely agree that it is very altruistic, and I am tempted to ask whether it is not too altruistic. My right hon. Friend mentioned that Jamaica was seeking a loan in the New York market. I hope that the United States attitude to the granting of that loan to Jamaica, if it is for the purpose of goods, will be as altruistic as the United Kingdom attitude, and I hope that no strings will be attached to United States loans.
That brings me to another problem which also concerns the United States and the West Indies. We have been told that in the next few months the present restrictions on the imports of canned fruit from the dollar area are to be removed. When that happens it will throw the canned fruit industry of the West Indies open to the most fierce competition from the huge canned fruit industry of Florida and California—industry which depends for its living largely on its huge home market and has only a very small proportion of its output devoted to exports. If that industry seriously sets about the task when the dollar restrictions are removed, it will be

able to compete with the canned fruit industry of the West Indies on most favourable terms from its point of view. I can see nothing but ruin for this West Indies industry unless something is done to prevent this huge dollar competition.
This brings me to a point which is coupled with the reference by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) to the European Common Market. He referred to the danger to exports, particularly from some of the African territories, to continental Europe, and he was thinking primarily of cocoa, coffee and timber, which at present find a market in the six countries of the European Common Market. This market may go to corresponding Colonial Territories of those European countries—other West African territories which produce the same goods—as the effect of the Common Market is developed.
May I make a point which I have made many times in the House, particularly in debates on colonial affairs? It is time that we devoted our efforts to ensuring that there are markets for the produce of the Colonial Territories with which we are at present concerned. It is no good our spending huge sums of money on them if there is not a market for their produce when it is grown or, if it is industrial goods, when it is manufactured. I cannot help repeating what I have said so many times before—that we must think seriously whether the economic policy which we are pursuing at the moment, tied as it is by the restrictions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, is enough for the purpose and is also enough to help our export trade in the present situation.
Much of Africa is not allowed to discriminate in favour of this or any other country, under various treaty obligations, although we give Imperial Preference in our home markets. The whole system needs revising in the light of post-war needs and the effect of inflation on the value of many of the specific preferences and also in the light of modern conditions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Sir J. Barlow) mentioned the danger of the stranglehold which the Russians sometimes obtain by buying a commodity from a Commonwealth country or Colonial Territory and launching it on the world market. That


threat can similarly be met by our recovering the right to regulate our Commonwealth trade as we think fit.
I am certain that if we are to get the best results out of colonial development and welfare, and if we are to produce the soundest economies for the Colonial Territories and help them to stand on their own feet, able to repay the loans which are made to them and to derive the full benefit from them, we must go into the question of assuring them a market and of restoring the system which, after all, helped to build the old British Empire in the past and which, I am sure, will help to preserve the future.

8.7 p.m.

Mr. James Johnson: Too often in the Chamber we talk about wars and alarums of wars, but tonight we are speaking of a war in which we can all join, on both sides of the House—a war upon want. I think that this is completely non-party, or all-party, and that all hon. Members can unite to spend as much as we honestly believe we can safely afford out of our national kitty for these people overseas.
At the moment about 70 million people in the dependent territories are our wards. We shall possibly hive off almost half of them within the next 18 months, when Nigeria becomes independent, but we shall still be left with tens of millions of people in our charge. In addition, there are many hundreds of millions in other under-developed dependencies and backward territories who are living in want and poverty. It is estimated that 60 per cent. of the world's population is well below what is even a meagre standard of subsistence. We should all welcome such a Bill as this and should say to the Colonial Secretary, "More power to your elbow, and see whether you can add to the amount which you are spending in the years to come."
Doing some mental arithmetic, I understand that we have about £90 million carry-over from our last assignment, to which we are adding a sum enabling us to spend about £25 million per annum over the next five years. That is a considerable sum compared with what we have spent in the past.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The carry-over is £40 million or so and the sum is now £90 million.

Mr. Johnson: In any event it is £25 million a year for the next five years. We can say that this is modest and that we should spend more, and indeed I think that we should spend more. For once I am in the same school as the right hon. Member for Carshalton (Mr. Head) who said the other evening that he would sooner spend £5 million on education in Kenya than buy a Blue Streak or a Bloodhound, or whichever was the missile to which he objected.
Before I turn to more detailed comment, may I say a word about the speech of the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell)? We always expect hon. Members opposite to laud the virtues of private enterprise. He speaks about the builders in the United Kingdom having solved the housing problem. He should remember that they are operating among 50 million people who have an average annual income of £300 a year. He speaks about these gentlemen in the building industry, these big building firms, providing the customer at home with a house to let or for sale, but surely he realises that that is not quite the same as providing houses in the Colonial Territories. The problem of a firm in Tooting Bec or Surbiton putting up houses here is not the same as that of a firm putting up houses in Nyasaland, where the annual income per head is probably less than £20. The people there could not afford the payment of a small sum, let alone a mortgage of £15 a month on the Government's 8 per cent. or 7½ per cent. at the moment.
Let us face reality. In these large overseas fields it must be done by public money. It must be done by the Colonial Office and by the Government of the territory. There is not a consumers' market for what the hon. Member for Wembley, South lauds. Let us be realists. It is alleged that we on this side of the House are idealists. Hon. Members on the other side of the House are realists. Let them not say that one can have the captains of industry building houses for the poor people in the Colonies.

Mr. Russell: I was not wondering whether they could do the whole lot. I was wondering whether they could help.

Mr. Johnson: That is infinitesimal. Where is the market for building in


Nyasaland, which has a population of 2½ million and income per head of less than £20 per annum? What about Tanganyika, with a population of 8½ million Africans with an annual income of probably about £25 to £27 a year? What about Kenya, which is a little better off? I cannot understand this argument. I do not find it possible when I go overseas to look at some of our Colonies.
I have listened to quite a few speakers this evening. Some hon. Members underestimate the nature of the problem. I do no think that we shall ever catch up, as United Kingdom taxpayers, with the task of giving these dependent peoples what they need in the way of housing, wealth, education, and so on. We can only nibble at the problem. As we go into the Colonies with our hygiene, modern medicine and hospitals, the population increases by leaps and bounds. We can never catch up.
Paragraph 11 of the White Paper says:
The terms of trade of many colonies have recently deteriorated.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I think I am right in saying that while the national income of the Colonies is rising 4 per cent. annually, the population is rising by 2 per cent., taking the whole field. [An HON. MEMBER: "Yes."] I am reassured. That being so, we are doing something more than merely standing still.

Mr. Johnson: Yes. I will not say that we are going backwards, but we are on a very slow-moving escalator. Sometimes it is not even going up at all. Paragraph 11 of the White Paper says:
In the short run the cost of running and maintaining roads, schools, hospitals an similar services often exceeds the additions to national income and Government revenue to which they give rise.
Despite the Minister's statistical comment about a 4 per cent. rise in national income and a 2 per cent. rise in population, is it not a fact that we never catch up? We are like Alice in the Looking Glass all over again. The harder we run the harder we have to run to keep our pace almost at a standstill.
This is a difficult matter. It is not a party matter. If the Labour Party were returned to power in six months' time, it would face the problem. I think that

we could make a better job of it than the Government. We might give a little more than was suggested by the hon. Member for Carshalton. We might cut down on those horrible missiles that were spoken of and spend a few million pounds in Kenya.
Any economic authority would tell us that the gap is widening, despite the statement that the national income is rising by 4 per cent. while the population is rising by only 2 per cent. The gap is widening, not merely between their needs and desires, which are whetted by having contact with Europeans. The more they mix with us, the more they desire. They need clothing, bicycles and housing. Even so, the gap is widening between the standards of the wealthy western European societies and these underdeveloped territories, particularly in Africa. This is a highly dangerous situation, because other people are not slow to point this out, particularly down the east coast and centre of Africa, where there is an inflamed social and political situation, due to the clash between the outside European elements in the territory and the indigenous peoples.
I will now say a few words on investment in Africa. I have listened this evening to people who have said that Africa has enormous wealth. Has it? Africa is not a wealthy continent. What is left if one takes away the Union, where we have exploited for many decades diamonds and gold? What is left if one takes away the cocoa and palm belt of West Africa with timber and some iron ore in Liberia. Guinea, Sierra Leone, and so on? What is left if one takes away the coffee of Kenya and Northern Tanganyika and lastly the copperbelt of the Belgian Congo and the Northern Rhodesian copperbelt? Most of Africa has soil which is alkaline. Most of Africa lacks water. It needs enormous sums for irrigation.
Tanganyika is a place in point. It is a semi-desert. People have spoken of Africa being an Aladdin's Cave, suggesting that all one has to do is to tap a merchant on the shoulder in Liverpool for a ship to go to Dar-es-Salaam and bring back fabulous treasures. That suggestion takes a little swallowing sometimes. We shall have to invest enormous sums in capital in Africa. I mean thousands of millions of pounds a year, not £25 million a year, as the White Paper says.
I am staggered by the astronomical task which confronts us. Kenya has an annual budget of £31½ million. It is estimated that, if we attempted to give each little boy and girl in Kenya an eight-year elementary education, as we had in this country before the First World War, it would cost £22 million a year. That is the measure of the task. We have had to find money also for docks, harbours, police, administration, hospitals, housing, and so forth. This is an endless task, but we have to get on with it and do as much as we possibly can, firstly by providing current services, like the social services, and, secondly, by pumping in capital and investment, to earn dividends in five or ten years' time.
The Secretary of State, and also my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. James Callaghan), spoke of the need to stabilise economies. So did the hon. Member for Middleton and Prestwich (Sir J. Barlow). It is very important. The hon. Member spoke about monoculture and these places with only one staple product. Even this Government have had sufficient sense to carry on the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement which means that Barbados, Fiji and others have had something to hang on to. Heaven help them if they had had to compete with cheap Cuban sugar in open world markets.
There is no doubt whatever that we should take more steps to attempt to stabilise these societies overseas and attempt to put in at least a basement, if we cannot have a ceiling, upon these primary products which they export. in case we move into a world recession. As the White Paper says, as the years have gone by we have been buying more cheaply fibres, metals and other things. If that continues, there will be less real income amassed by these Colonies. We need to stabilise their position. The Minister smiles, no doubt both inwardly and outwardly, at my party's policy of bulk purchase. There is no doubt that the policy of bulk purchase, as with sugar, has been an enormous stiffener to the economies of these territories.
I want to say something to the Minister which I need not say, because he knows it as well as I do. The days of cheap food have gone for ever, both in the East End of London and in the West End. If cheap food has gone in this sense, we at

home must pay for it. We have been living on "tick" in the past.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: If the hon. Member will say that in the East End of London at the next General Election and encourage other candidates of his party to say it, I am sure that it will be appreciated. Many Conservative Members of Parliament have said it for a long time.

Mr. Johnson: As the Minister knows, said it in my constituency and many others in 1950, 1951 and 1955. I say it too in 1958 and 1959, because it is an honest thing to say. I believe that the electors like honesty from both sides of the House. Honesty pays dividends. We should be quite open about it, as the Labour Party was at the 1956 party conference, when the miners' leader, Sam Watson, talked in those terms to 2,000 delegates. At least 9 million members of my party know it, and all the trade union members heard it.
The Colonial Secretary well knows that our policy is:0 earmark l per cent. of our national geographical income for this special and deliberate purpose, which he has so worthily outlined in this White Paper. Within its technical limits, this is a good White Paper. It is clear, succinct and easy to get one's teeth into. It is well documented. All I say is that more money should be spent in this way. That is my only quibble at a White Paper that is well worth looking at.
The Minister speaks of a new departure in loans. In paragraph 19 he gives himself a pat on the back, saying that since our Colonial Territories could not get sufficient money on the home market, this magnificent Government intended to make sure that they got the money they wanted a—but at ½ per cent. over the rate charged by the commercial money market. In other words, whatever the London moneylenders charge the Government, the Government will charge the territories a little more to make sure that the territories get what they want. I understand that the rate is to be ½ per cent. over that in the money market, and perhaps the Colonial Secretary will tell me if I am right.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: That will be dealt with by the Under-Secretary of State at the end of the debate.

Mr. Johnson: I shall be delighted if I am then contradicted, because that is


the impression that one gets from the White Paper.
Why must these very poor, non-viable territories like Gambia, Somaliland, Nyasaland—of all places—have to go to the money market and pay 6 per cent., 7 per cent., or 8 per cent? Why cannot the Government turn their mind to something which, in the past, United Kingdom Governments on both sides had—the Public Works Loan Board in which was earmarked a certain sum of money for local authorities; in this case, obviously, overseas territorial Governments—for these special social purposes?
We have that for education and housing, I know, but it is obviously necessary in regard to health, and education in particular, where we do not get money back as we would from investments in gold mines and sisal plantations. On all counts we should enable these poor overseas territories to get from a special fund—some financial chest specially earmarked for the job—supplies of money for internal development as well below a rate of 5 per cent. I would say that for such a job the rate of interest should be 2½ per cent. or even 2 per cent.
On this side of the House we believe in a cheap money policy, not only at home but in these overseas territories. It is all very well to talk of raising market loans, but I think that the Minister would show himself more worthy of the mantle of Joe Chamberlain, which was flung at him earlier in the debate, if, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East said earlier, he became a little more Socialist.
Listening to the earlier part of the Colonial Secretary's speech, I thought that he committed himself to saying that the limit in this field was purely finance½

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Not purely.

Mr. Johnson: Is it not the fact that today in all the newspapers we see advertisements for this and that technologist, this and that engineer, this and that skilled operative, while even in some of the territories where we have earmarked more money we still have difficulty in getting the people we need?
This is particularly the case in education. In Africa, especially, we need

gifted teachers, or people who will impart teaching methods to future African teachers. What is so badly needed are teachers, gifted teachers, to go out from this country to the territories, and to lecture in their colleges. Earlier this evening the hon. Member for Leicester, South-East (Mr. Peel) spoke of education. We believe in this on both sides of the House. We all agree with what was said by the hon. Member, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson) and others about the need for more education in the Colonies. We want technical teachers, and teachers of all kinds.
I would say just this about technical teachers. When I go into many African institutions I do not find a willingness on the part of Africans to become technicians. Far too many of them wish to become white-collar workers. Students are not so happy in the workshops in Northern Nigeria, where they are Muslims; or in the South, where they are negroes. I should like to see many more Africans go into the technical side. Very often we have technical facilities, but not sufficient Africans willing to take off their coats and get on with this important job.
Above all, the big need is for teacher-training colleges. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) spoke about Nigeria. I will deliberately skip Nigeria, but will, if I may, give some figures relating to other dependent territories. Startling progress has been made in Ghana—particularly since independence, but even before it. A dynamic has been released in Ghana. Knowing their own future, the people are going ahead in a co-operative effort. They have got together on adult education and day normal education. At present, Ghana has nearly 21,000 teachers for a population of 4½ million.
Let us compare that with the situation in some of the other territories for which we have full and undivided responsibility. Sierra Leone, with a little over 2 million Africans, has 2,000 teachers—about 1 per 100. Kenya, with 6¾ million Africans, has 9,000 teachers. Tanganyika, with just short of 9 million Africans, has little over 9,000 teachers—again, about I teacher to every 100 of the African population. Nyasaland, where at the moment we are


having these disturbances—and educational facilities, of course, have a connection there—has a population of 2,650,000, and it has 6,000 teachers. Poor Gambia has 247 teachers for 275,000 people. Northern Rhodesia, my last example, with 2½ million Africans, has 4,800 teachers.
Our most important task is to concentrate on getting more teachers—

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am obliged to the hon. Member for giving way. Would he say what the situation has been over the last five to ten years, and thereby represent to the House the spectacular increase there has been in recent years?

Mr. Johnson: I entirely agree that as each year goes by we are getting more and more teachers, but do not let the Colonial Secretary become a Communist like those in the Soviet Union who use such wonderful statistics. They can be wonderful if we begin with a base level of very small numbers; one can then say, "My word, we are up by 1,000 per cent." That is what happens in the Soviet Union. A collective farm may have a field with 1,000 cabbages. The next year there are 2,000 cabbages, and the claim is that there has been an increase of 100 per cent. That, of course, is true in such circumstances. But do not let us say that in the territories. It all depends on the original base line. Of course, we are going up. I only plead for an even bigger spurt to be made, and even more energy to be shown, by the party opposite. The Minister agrees with me, but it is a matter of degree. As always, the two sides are by and large on the same path, but we wish to go, and will go, much faster than his side has been going.
My last question is the same as was asked earlier in the debate—who allocates the money? It was stated earlier that sometimes the naughty boys tend to get a larger allocation of the money. The right hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do the amount of money that has been spent in Kenya on the Kikuyu land unit as opposed to the Luo of Nyanza. There is the feeling that those people who go along quietly and loyally do not get quite what the others do. I should like to impress upon the right hon. Gentleman that the Somalis, and particularly those in Gambia and Nyasaland, require much mare to be spent on them than they have so far had.
There is a close correlation between the disturbances in Nyasaland and the undeveloped or backward states in the territory. Some years ago there was a scheme involving the Shire Dam, but it was never finished. That is a good example. There are many other projects where more money could be pumped in this forgotten little Switzerland in Africa. These people do not like the influence of Southern Rhodesia coming over the Zambesi, but they are also backward in education and in their economic development. I hope there will not be a correlation, a mathematical distinction, between the amount of the disturbance in the territory and the amount of money which is to be spent on it.
I said earlier that this matter of overseas aid is an astronomical task. Like Alice Through the Looking Glass, one has to travel quickly in order to keep on the same spot. I ask the Minister to invite help from other sources. In spite of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and various Commonwealth resources, and even allowing for private enterprise, such as the copper tycoons in Lusaka ploughing back their money, it seems to me that American money will be invested increasingly in Africa. American money is coming into Kenya at this moment. I ask the right hon. Gentleman not to be too proud to accept American help in culture, literature and education as well.
There has been reference to the need for books and education of all kinds. America can help us with adult education particularly. We have asked that staff at Makarere University College should be released to go to Tanganyika to assist in adult education. Why the Government have never permitted this I do not know. It was highly successful in Kenya and in Uganda. Yet Tanganyika has lagged behind. I need not emphasise the importance of adult education, because if there are illiterate mothers and fathers they provide a bad home for the youngsters to go back to after school. Illiteracy is bad for citizenship and it also prevents the people from understanding what their leaders tell them. We must make massive inroads in eliminating adult illiteracy, alongside the orthodox task of putting the boys and girls into school.
Let us not be averse to outside help. We have spoken earlier of the 1 per cent. which my party was going to allocate to overseas development. Let the Minister consider a scheme dike S.U.N.F.E.D. There is no doubt, in view of the size of the problem, that sooner or later this has got to be tackled on an international scale by the United Nations. I would say to the Colonial Secretary, at this late hour, because this has no effect on the Bill, that in the dark hours of the night he may think about this matter of international co-operation and working together in what I think is the noblest war of all wars—the "war on want" in these under-developed territories.

8.35 p.m.

Mr. Norman Pannell (Liverpool, Kirk-dale): It is a very great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson), who has such a wide and intimate knowledge of colonial affairs, especially in Africa, and who expresses his views with such moderation, a moderation which I should like to feel could be shared by some of his colleagues.
The hon. Member made many pertinent remarks, one of which I thought was exceptionally significant, when he implied that the more successful we are in the Colonies the more problems we create for ourselves. By introducing hygiene and sanitation, we increase the expectation of life, and we provide more mouths to feed. I was very impressed when I was visiting Northern Nigeria, to which the hon. Member for Rugby made reference himself, on being shown a chart at a research department which indicated the incidence of Trypanosomiasis in Nigeria since 1931. It showed that, in 1931, 100,000 cases were notified, while in 1955 there were 5,000. When one considers how that fatal disease has been brought within such limits, it becomes quite clear that, in that case alone, the population of Nigeria has increased immensely as a result of these devoted efforts by these research experts.
There are one or two points which have been made during the debate on which I should like to comment. The hon. Member for Bilston (Mr. R. Edwards), who I regret is not in his place at the moment, but with whom I spent a happy fortnight in Sierra Leone two months ago, made

some very good points, particularly in regard to the co-operative movement, about which he is so enthusiastic and on which he is such an expert. I am quite sure that in his speeches to the people of Sierra Leone he did something to encourage the growth of that movement, which I think is the best of all influences in Sierra Leone. When I praise the co-operative movement, I am not referring to the type of co-operative movement that exists in this country, but to a co-operative movement of quite a different character. It is a movement in which farmers are getting together for the collective sale of their products.
The hon. Member for Bilston also implied that, as a result of his visit, he agreed that nationalism had developed such a head of steam that it would be net only wise but right for us to grant independence to every country that asked us for it. He suggested that it was a right of people to be independent. I think that if we accepted that view we should abdicate our responsibilities. Not only would these services of which I have spoken—hygiene, sanitation and so forth—collapse, with disastrous results for the people, but, I would add, it is not the purpose of independence that a small oligarchy, capable perhaps of filling the offices of state, should govern a country whose people are wholly, or almost wholly, illiterate and incapable of understanding the workings of democracy. This is a trouble into which we so easily fall. It is not a question of the government of the people by the bosses for the bosses; it is a question of the government of the people for the benefit of the whole country.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney) referred to what he said was the virtual collapse of democracy in Ghana. We must remember that fifteen years ago the word "democracy" was almost unknown there. We governed these Colonies in an authoritarian manner, and there were only the beginnings of consultations with African representatives at that time. In a space of ten or fifteen years, having imposed a Parliamentary democracy upon these people, a thing which we have been developing for centuries, we expect them to work it in the same manner as ourselves. It is inevitable that there should be strains and stresses in the operation


of democracy in these areas, and this lends emphasis to the point that we can do more harm than good by granting independence too hastily before a country is fit for it.
I very much welcome the Bill, because it does the only thing which can be done in the circumstances; it is designed to help people to help themselves, providing the means for the growth of their economy. In my view, it would be wrong for us to extend these privileges to countries which have been granted independence. It would place an impossible burden on this country if, no longer responsible for wise administration in those territories, we were to allow any country with independence to act according to its own devices and to come to us for massive financial help. The Colonies have to choose. The French Government, for example, have said to some of their Colonies, "If you prefer to do without us, you may". These countries cannot have their independence and still be dependent upon this country.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) and other hon. Members spoke about the allocation of funds under the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts. I admit that I have been puzzled about this. I should not like to subscribe to the view of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East, that the amount allocated is in direct proportion to a country's disloyalty or the level of its political agitation, although the figures I wish to quote do, perhaps, lend some support to that view.
I have taken four Colonies, British Honduras, Swaziland, British Guiana and Sierra Leone. British Honduras has a population of 60,000 people. The colonial development and welfare allocation is £4,100,000, or £68 a head. British Guiana, with 500,000 people, has £15 a head. Swaziland, with 240,000 people, has £8 a head. There are very wide disparities there. Sierra Leone, a country in which I now take a particular interest after my recent visit there with a Parliamentary delegation, has a population of 2 million. The colonial development and welfare allocation is £4 million, or only £2 a head. What is the reason for these wide disparities?
British Honduras and British Guiana have not been very dutiful members of the Commonwealth in recent years. Perhaps there is some other criterion.

Perhaps it is the degree of need. Need. it seems to me—it is the only yardstick we have—should be measured by Government Revenue; this, surely gives some indication. British Honduras has a Government Revenue of £1,300 million, or about £20 a head. British Guiana has a Government Revenue of £9 million or £18 per head a year. Swaziland has £6 per head per year, and Sierra Leone has only £5. On this reckoning, Sierra Leone is the poorest of them all and has the smallest allocation per head under the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts.
Is there some other criterion? Perhaps progress in the country should be taken into account.
In British Honduras, as far as I can see, primary education is provided for every child. For a population of 60,000, it has 17,000 primary school places. British Guiana with a population of 500,000 has 106,000 primary school places which gives every child the chance of primary education. Sierra Leone, with a population of 2 million, has only 62,000 places, which gives an opportunity of primary education to only one child in seven. It would therefore appear that Sierra Leone justifies a much larger allocation than it has received, or that the other territories should have received a much smaller allocation.
There is, however, another factor to be taken into account. I refer to the agency engaged in the development of the Colonies, the Colonial Development Corporation. We find that whereas the Colonial Development Corporation has spent £7 per head of population in British Honduras, £38 in Swaziland and £9 in British Guiana, it has not spent a penny in Sierra Leone.
I know it must appear that I am making a special plea, but I was very much impressed during my recent visit to Sierra Leone by the great need for development, particularly in education. It would appear from the figures which I have quoted that the allocations are not made on the basis of need, but in inverse ratio to need. As I think the hon. Member for Bilston said, Sierra Leone is an ancient and loyal Colony. It is governed at the moment by an African Government of very moderate and reasonable views, headed by that enlightened statesman Sir Milton Margai. It is one of


those Colonies which, in my view, deserves phased help from this country over a period, particularly in education.
I saw many schools in Sierra Leone while I was there which were built with money from the colonial development and welfare funds. They stood out in startling contrast to the squalid little buildings that were the common means of education in the territory. They were indeed so grandiose that they struck quite an odd note, and one could not help but reflect that it would be far better to build a larger number of smaller schools than to spend £50,000 or £60,000 on a limited number of grandiose buildings.
When I raised this matter with the Minister of Education, he told me that the schools were not built to the Department's own specification but that the conditions of building were laid down by the Colonial Office. I would be most grateful if my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary or his colleague the Under-Secretary would kindly take note of that fact. I should like to know whether the Colonial Office imposes the style of building on the Colonial Territories for schools built from the colonial development and welfare funds. I was told that they were compelled to build schools of this grandiose character under the instructions and specifications of the Colonial Office.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Mr. Lennox-Boyd indicated dissent.

Mr. Pannell: I am glad to hear the denial of my right hon. Friend. There is certainly scope for far more schools in Sierra Leone, and I hope that my plea will result in a greater allocation being made to that territory from the funds already available and the further funds to be made available by the Bill.
On several of these schools in Sierra Leone, there appeared a copper plaque prominently displayed at the entrance with words to the effect that the school was built with money supplied by the people of the United Kingdom through colonial development and welfare funds. I was pleased to see these plaques. They are a constant reminder of what we are doing deliberately to prepare these people to take over their own responsibility of Government, and I would like to think that plaques of this kind should be a condition of all such schools built in the future.
Like the hon. Member for Rugby, I should like to see more money made available, but I recognise that however much we strain ourselves we should never be able to raise these countries to a status even comparable with that obtaining in this country. We are responsible for countries with populations totalling 83 million. If we were to endeavour by our efforts, even over a generation, to raise these people to our own standard, we should certainly beggar ourselves in the process. Indeed, our own standard would not remain where it is but would fall seriously. I welcome the Bill as an earnest effort in the right direction, and I am confident that the House will give it an unopposed Second Reading.

8.52 p.m.

Mr. A. Blenkinsop (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East): I wish to intervene to ask one question. I would not dare to do more as owing to other meetings on rather comparable subjects I have not been able to hear as much of the debate as I should have liked. I wish to ask only one question concerning the problem of medical personnel doing work within colonial development and welfare schemes in territories such as the West Indies, where there is a severe lack of adequate medical personnel, including, for example, pediatricians and others for children's diseases. We have seen some excellent new hospitals built there, but there is an urgent need for more medical staff.
I wonder whether any progress is being made, not only in trying to get agreement with our medical service in the Commonwealth, which is established jointly with the Colonial Office, but also to see whether it is not possible to get an agreement to regard to medical work in the colonial service as ranking pari passu with work within our own National Health Service to encourage people to go out there, where they are so badly needed, but who at present are still worried lest when they go they lose the chance of jobs which otherwise they might have got in this country. I hope that the Secretary of State will keep this point in mind.

8.54 p.m.

Mrs. Barbara Castle: In his opening speech, the Colonial Secretary gave me a charming welcome in my new rôle, for which I thank him. He and I have crossed swords on many an


occasion, but never in such close proximity. I find the situation a little strange if not altogether unpleasing.
The Colonial Secretary said that he anticipated that I would exercise my critical faculty upon his Bill. To my surprise, however, as I listened to the development of his theme, I found that he was forestalling quite a large number of my criticisms. It was clear from his speech that the premises on which the right hon. Gentleman is working have changed since the last time he introduced a Bill to increase colonial development and welfare funds. He no longer claims, as he did in 1955, that it is no good the House of Commons voting any more money than the limited increases provided for in the Bill because there simply is not the manpower available.
That was his main argument in 1955, and I was surprised and pleased to hear him say today that the limiting factor now is one of finance and not of trained manpower. I am glad we have got that one out of the way because it enables this House to face its duty quite clearly. We are no longer able to say, "With all the generosity in the world, it is no good our doing any more because the Colonial Governments simply could not take up the money we might make available for they have not the trained personnel and technicians."
I was glad, too, to hear him admit to the existence of two of the most important factors in this situation of colonial welfare finance, first of all the burden of the recurrent charges arising from the development expenditure which has already been made, a burden which is now crippling colonial budgets, and secondly the fact that this burden is increasing at the very moment when the terms of trade are making it most hard for colonial Governments to balance their accounts.
It is against that background and in that context that we now have to examine this Bill. Impressed as I was by the Colonial Secretary's arguments, I am not equally impressed by the action he is proposing to take under this Bill. Of course, everyone in this House welcomes any increase in expenditure on colonial development and welfare, and, therefore, for this advance much thanks, but we must ask ourselves tonight certain searching questions. The first one is, is this

increase really enough? Has this House begun to grasp the size and urgency of the problem which meets us?
We had earlier today a tremendous furore in this House on political issues arising in one of our Colonial Territories, and we were made conscious as that debate proceeded, even if we were not before, that Africa is on the move and that we were dealing with one of the aspects of a highly explosive situation. Of course, colonial territories everywhere are coming to a new self-realisation, and we should be very foolish if we were to fail to recognise that with every year that passes the colonial and backward areas of the world will judge the West by much tougher standards than they have ever done in the past, and that what we could get away with five years ago no longer matches the changing mood of the dependent and backward peoples.
I know that the Colonial Secretary can argue that he has a double virtue. Not only is he proposing to increase the actual amounts of expenditure on colonial welfare and development, but he is doing this at a time when the populations in our Colonial Territories are on the decrease. However, even recognising that we have had during the period since the war a steady increase in the sums we are making available for these purposes, we have still got to look at what these grants mean to these territories in actual relief in an increasingly urgent situation. Today, even with the increases proposed in this Bill, the amount which we are expecting to spend will work out at only 13s. per head per year, which is 4½d. per head per week, for these desperately poor Colonial Territories which are now politically aflame as they have never been before in our long history. And they are thinking, even if we are not, of the contrast between their situation and ours.
Although we may say, "Look what good boys we are. Year by year we have increased this amount," what have we really done? What sacrifices have we imposed upon ourselves? What drain have we made upon our resources? What have we given up? We tend to be very hypocritical and sanctimonious about it, but can we say that on balance we have given up anything at all?
Looking at it in purely financial terms, in the period 1946–55 the total amount of colonial aid that we have given from


the colonial development and welfare schemes has amounted to less than one-thousandth of our national income. Even if we add to that loans raised on the London market, to which the Colonial Secretary referred today, it still works out at less than two-thousandths of the national income.
I begin, therefore, by saying that I feel we must have a greater sense of urgency about this problem than we have shown so far, particularly because one of the reasons for the virtue which the Colonial Secretary is claiming in making increased amounts available at a time when the colonial populations are decreasing is the very unfortunate political decision to exclude from the colonial development and welfare schemes the emergent territories. If we were doing as we should be doing and keeping them on the balance sheet of colonial development and welfare, this amount per head of population would look very much shabbier. When we decide not to apply this aid to territories the moment they become independent, it means that we cut out countries like Ghana.
The gross revenue per head in Ghana in 1956 was about £15. She received between 1946 and 1958 an average annual amount of aid of 1s. 4d. per head. Not a great deal, was it? Yet we cut it off as the price of independence. General de Gaulle could not do better. Let us take Nigeria as another example. In a debate in 1955 the Colonial Secretary spoke very movingly of the tour which he had just made of Nigeria. He said:
Nobody who tours that great country … can fail to realise how important a factor in its development has been, and will be, colonial development and welfare money.
Nigeria's gross revenue per head then was £2 2s., and she was getting aid working out at about 1s. 3½d. per head per year. It was not much, but on the Colonial Secretary's own showing Nigeria was so poor that that small sum made a tremendous difference to her. Yet earlier, in justifying his refusal to extend colonial aid to territories which are reaching independence, the Colonial Secretary told us:
… Territories that are approaching full self-government are on the whole Territories whose financial position makes the importance of colonial development and welfare money far less than it is in most other Territories.

Which version are we to take? Nigeria's income has not risen so spectacularly that she still does not need our help.
It smacks somewhat of the hypocrisy which we sometimes bring to these colonial questions that the right hon. Gentleman should have gone on to say:
Those of us who have genuinely put ourselves behind the policy of greater self-government in the Colonial Territories do not wish to make them more dependent than they are, because with that, political or other advance becomes a mockery."—[OFFICAL. REPORT, 2nd February, 1955; Vol. 536, c. 1119–24.]
For us to advance an argument like that to countries who desire both political independence and economic help in order to enable them to make that political independence a reality does not do us any Good in the backward areas of the world.
If the Colonial Secretary thinks that economic aid from this country would undermine the independence of these emergent territories, that it might have strings which would be humiliating, he has a remedy which we on this side of the House have advocated. Let him back the scheme of S.U.N.F.E.D. under which we should channel this aid through the United Nations—a policy which Her Majesty's Government have not been particularly outstanding in supporting. I am afraid that the real trouble is that in this Bill we are still prepared only to do too little and to withdraw our aid too soon.
It is, of course, countries like Nigeria who at the moment are most in need of aid. Yet Nigeria is within eighteen months of independence. Look at her position now. It is true that her revenue per head has gone up to about £2 10s. But her expenditure per head has gone up to £3 10s. 9d. in her budget. In West Africa in February of this year there was an interesting report of the Budget speech of Chief Festus, Nigeria's Minister of Finance, indicating the tremendous financial problems facing that country in its attempt to finance the development programme mapped out for 1958–62. In that four-year period Nigeria plans to spend £112 million, and the Finance Minister pointed out that he has to meet a gap of £58 million. From where will he meet it? He proposes to try to raise some local loans internally. He also said that he


would make full use of the United Kingdom Government's promise to make Exchequer loans to Commonwealth countries which could not raise money on reasonable conditions on the London market.
The Finance Minister said that even taking all those possible sources of revenue into account,
the greater part of the gap left after using all their other resources would have to be filled from inside Nigeria. He then explained that the recent heavy increases in import duties on petrol, cigarettes, alcohol, cloth and clothing, hardware and motor vehicles would produce probably £10 million in the next three years, his Government's share of which would go to capital expenditure. Some of the items taxed can stand the increase; but even the price of food in the markets has already jumped up as a result of the increase in the petrol tax, and the poorer classes of Nigerians are paying a heavy contribution to their country's development.
We are proposing to cut off aid to this Commonwealth country when it becomes independent, and the poorest sections of the community will have to close the gap by taxation on the necessities of life. How can we hope to keep the Commonwealth together by that kind of approach to its problems'?
When we try to examine whether or not this Bill is adequate to meet the problem we must recognise that it comes at a moment when a large number of Colonial Territories are facing deficits. Take Tanganyika as an example. She had a budgetary deficit in 1958–59 of £1·2 million. Mr. Fletcher-Cooke—not the hon. Member for Darwen, but the special representative for Tanganyika at the United Nations' Trusteeship Council—pointed out that the situation facing them in 1959–60 is even worse. He said:
We may expect lower revenue from income tax and customs. The fall in oil seed prices, the severe fall in cotton prices, the expected severe fall in coffee prices, and the probable reduction of capital expenditure in both public and private sectors suggests a decrease in customs revenue figures. Thus the economy is unlikely to be able to support expenditure in 1959–60 at any higher level than in 1958–59 and it may well he at a lower level. Unless there is an unexpected and very marked improvement in our revenue this must lead to a cutting back of the social and other services which the territory so badly needs.
What are the causes of these problems facing colonial budgets? The first and outstanding one, as that speech reveals, is the fall in the prices of primary products. It has been estimated in the G.A.T.T. document. "Trends in Inter-

national Trade", that the prices of primary products have fallen by 5 per cent. since 1955, at a time when the prices of manufactured goods have risen by 6 per cent. The whole balance of trade is being turned against the Colonies at this crucial moment in their development schemes.
As one hon. Member after another has pointed out, this is the irony of the development programme which we are launching. Once we have begun it and have encouraged and helped the Colonial Territories to begin these development schemes, the need for our help is greater, not less, because of the mounting recurrent charges arising from them. They build a new school and they have to pay more teachers. This situation is frightening people in Colonial Territories which have embarked upon development schemes. Others are only able to balance their colonial budgets by means of short-term advances. Indeed, this is the very reason why the Government are rushing through these loan proposals. They know that so many colonial budgets are being held together by the string, as it were, of these short-term advances.
Look at the terms on which these loans will be made available. This is the most iniquitous part of the Bill. It really is not any answer to a Colonial Territory that is faced with a fall in the price of primary products, plus a mounting bill for servicing the development schemes which they have already set on foot, to say, "You are finding it difficult to raise money on the London market. Therefore, we will make loans available to you at rates of interest which The Times has estimated will be 5¼ per cent." Not only that, but the absolutely ludicrous position is that the loans must be repaid by annual capital instalments added to the interest.
This is done for purely doctrinnaire reasons because the Government insist upon giving priority to the London market. The Colonial Secretary repeated, as though it were something to be proud of, that the Government believe that this new form of loan which they are advocating should merely be loans of "last recoil." For that reason, he has deliberately made the terms of the loan unattractive. Territories must go to the London market first, in an inflationary situation, and compete with other demands for capital. "Burden yourselves", they are


told, "with the high rates of interest on ordinary market loans. Only if that fails can you come to us, and then you will pay not only high rates of interest but will repay the capital in annual instalments."
I can hardly believe that the Colonial Secretary can have advocated this. He knows the Colonial scene too well not to appreciate what this must mean. What is the good, for instance, of going to Tanganyika, the Government of which has a budget deficit this year, and telling her that she can close it up by borrowing money when, if she borrows, she will only increase her problem next year, when her revenue position will be even more precarious?
This just does not make colonial administrative sense. We on this side of the House say that to meet the problem which is growing increasingly acute because of this worsening in the terms of trade in the Colonies there is only one way, and that is by grants adequate to close the gap or loans—if loans there must be—at specially cheap rates of interest. In our colonial economic policy document we state quite clearly that in our view loans of 5 per cent. are too high and we shall see to it that when we get a Labour Government no Colony is held up in its development plans because of excessive rates of interest for the money it has to borrow.
Many hon. Members have referred quite rightly to the educational needs of our Colonial Territories. Certainly if we are to break the vicious circle of shortage of technicians to get development plans going that is the point at which to do it. Education must have a very high priority. I agreed with many hon. Members who spoke about this, but this is the field in which the burden of recurrent charges weighs most heavily. When I was in Nyasaland a year ago—

Mr. Desmond Donnelly: My hon. Friend was lucky.

Mrs. Castle: Yes, I understand that the Dominion Party in the Central African Federation fought the last Federal elections on the promise that if it got into power I should immediately be declared a prohibited immigrant, but that was closing the stable door after the mare had gone.
When I was in Nyasaland, I had the very great pleasure and privilege of dining with the first African woman to get her teacher's education diploma in this country—at Bath. She was teaching in the Women's Teacher Training College in Blantyre. She said, "We want to expand the intake to this teacher training college to a double-stream entry. We have got 100 applicants this year but are allowed to accept only 36 of them because the Nyasaland Government have cut down their educational budget." I went to see the director of education to confirm the fact and had a long talk with him on the development plan. He showed it to me and said, "Yes, it is true. We cannot expand the teacher training as much as we should like because if we expand, get more teachers and increase teaching in quantity, the teachers' salaries in primary schools are the biggest recurrent item in our development plan, and we cannot afford it." That has been cut down, yet, even with these reductions in Nyasaland's education budget, she will face recurrent expenditure on education alone by 1961 which will be nearly four times the 1953 figure.
Economies of this kind are having to be enforced in a country like Nyasaland where only 24 per cent. of the children of school age are in Government or assisted schools. Yet we talk about the need for economies. What we really need in this country is an all-party effort to educate the people of this country about the urgency of the problem. It ought to be done on an all-party basis, because—let us face it—it will mean telling some hard truths to our own people. It is going to mean asking them for the first time to accept, shall we say, some delay in the advancement of their own individual standards. It is a task we ought to accept as a country which really believes in the Commonwealth There is only one way to do this. That is, to set our people a target which they can understand.
That target has been set and the principle established in the discussions in the United Nations, where the underdeveloped peoples themselves could speak of their problems and try to bring them to the attention of the world. As a result of those discussions it was agreed that it would not hurt the wealthier nations of the world to set aside 1 per cent. of their national income every year for the


development of colonial and backward territories. For this country that would mean an expenditure of £170 million a year.
In reply to this point which we have pressed, the Colonial Secretary has given different answers at different times. In a debate in January, 1958, for instance, he told us that this 1 per cent. was too meagre and that the Government were doing more. He said, "You ask for 1 per cent. We are doing not 1 per cent. but 1¼ per cent. in our £200 million investment in the Colonies." He has changed his tune a little today, for he has admitted that 1¼ per cent. covers investment in the whole of the Commonwealth, including the wealthier countries, who ought to be contributing to the backward areas and aught not to be on the list for aid.
I was interested to note the contrast between that and what was said a year earlier by one of his hon. Friends, the Under-Secretary of State, and we must have this policy made a little clearer by the Government, because they are apt to change their tune as elections approach. Having derided what we have been advocating far several years, they suddenly adopt it on the eve of an election. That is what I gather the Colonial Secretary is trying to do with the policy of investing 1 per cent. I would remind him that in November, 1957, in reply to a Question by Sir Ian Fraser, the then hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale asking about this "phoney idea" of ours of spending 1 per cent. of our income on the Colonies, the then Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies remarked,
if this is regarded as an Election promise by the party opposite, heaven save our country if they ever get into power again and this expenditure has to be put into effect"— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th November, 1957; Vol. 577, c. 1126.]
I do not know whether the Colonial Secretary takes that view or whether he takes the view that we have nothing to argue about because he is already doing what we have advocated.
In assessing what should come within our 1 per cent. we should not include private investment in the way in which the Colonial Secretary includes it, because private investment is not the answer to the problems of the Colonial Terri-

tories. As Barclays Bank Review pointed out some time ago, private investment in the Colonies has mainly gone into plantations, mining and general commerce rather than industry, and it certainly does not go into the provision of basic public services, without which nothing else can be done.
In any case, in reaching our figure of private investment we should always remember that we have to subtract from what we put into the Colonies the amount which they have put into the sterling area through the dollar pool. If we set one against the other we find that our figure is not very grand. The Government themselves in a recent White Paper estimated that the expenditure from public funds by this country in 1956–57 on colonial development and welfare schemes, the Colonial Development Corporation, export credits guarantees and through the International Bank amounted to only £36 million. Even taking the new increase into account, I would say that the most generous estimate of this pure aid would be that our expenditure is still running up to only £60 million a year.
I therefore answer the first question—"Are we doing enough?"—by the most categorical statement, "No". We must set our sights higher in the economic field just as we are having to set them higher in the political field with every week which passes. What would have been sufficient for yesterday is no longer sufficient for today.
Moreover, we have to realise that the economics and the politics of these matters are very much linked. We claim that we have gone beyond the approach of the 1929 Colonial Development and Welfare Act, which set out quite nakedly to consider colonial development and welfare purely as a means of promoting "commerce with or industry in the United Kingdom." In those days we admitted quite frankly that we were interested in the Colonies only as a source of raw materials. Now we say that we have got beyond that and it is all charitable donation on our part. Is it? Are we not still all the time looking at this from the point of view of our own interest first and the Colonies' interests second? Certainly the Government's loan provisions in the Bill are an outstanding example of that. The loans are assessed, not in terms of what


the Colonies need, but by purely commercial criteria that are suitable for this country and not for colonial needs.
I agree with hon. Members on both sides of the House—particularly the hon. Member for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. N. Pannell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson)—who have said that they were at a loss to understand the basis on which the distribution of these grant allocations is planned. It presents a curious picture. As the hon. Member for Kirkdale quite rightly said, it does not seem to have any very clear pattern or theme behind it. Some of us suspect that there is the wrong pattern or theme behind it. Some of us fear that purely African states like Uganda, states which we can gladly hand over to the local people because there is no entrenched white interest, are coming worst out of this deal, although they need most help. Uganda, with a gross revenue per head of about £3 7s. 6d., has been receiving 7¾d. per head on an average as an annual issue of grant, whereas Kenya, with a gross revenue per head more than four times that, has been receiving 2s. 3d. per head. As other hon. Members have done, I could go through the whole list. We would find it very difficult to understand on what basis this is being done.
Surely this means that the time has come to alter our whole approach. It must no longer be a question of our doing something for the Colonies. It must be the Commonwealth as a whole, and the Colonies as a whole doing something for each other and for themselves. There must be a pooling plan. It ought to be the Colonial Territories, sitting round a table with the richer members of the Commonwealth, who should decide where the limited resources ought to go. There ought to be a Commonwealth Development Council so that we could have a Commonwealth Development Plan. It is all the healthier and all the better if there is an interchange, an inter-lending, an inter-giving, so that we can stop this patronage from outside and from above and begin to identify ourselves for the first time with the minds and the needs of the colonial people.
One of the most revealing remarks the Prime Minister ever made was in the debate on the Queen's Speech last autumn, when he was speaking about

how the terms of trade had helped our balance of payments, had helped us to get by. He said:
We have had a bit of good luck perhaps." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th October, 1958; Vol. 594, c. 29.]
What does that little bit of luck mean? It means that in the past two years the fall in the import prices of our basic raw materials has been 15·7 per cent. That may be "a bit of good luck" to us. It is naked disaster to the primary producers of the world. It is time we dropped that sort of language, because it reveals that we are still living in the wrong era. We are living in the era of patronage. It is time we began the era of identification.

9.30 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Julian Amery): I hope that I may begin by congratulating the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) on the first speech that we have had from her from the Box. In this House, a first speech is traditionally known as a maiden speech. Perhaps we ought to term a first speech from the Box a widow's speech, and cast a tear for the loss of freedom it sometimes represents.
The hon. Lady said that my right hon. Friend's premises had changed a good deal since 1955—so, of course, have circumstances. It is the part of a good Conservative to adapt himself to changing circumstances. But one thing has not changed as much as some who spoke in that debate thought possible at the time. The right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) then said:
However, the right hon. Gentleman will not be in his present position when the next Bill comes forward …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd February, 1955; Vol. 536, c. 1130.]
—five years later. I am glad to say that the Celtic eye of prophecy was dim that night.
In these turbulent years since the war most of our Colonial debates have been on political subjects, filled with passion and controversy. It is rather a relief to the House—and the contrast was well illustrated by the skirmish we had after Question Time this afternoon—that this evening we should be dealing with the constructive and development aspect of colonial affairs. We are, in a sense, fulfilling what Lugard called the dual mandate: our trust to the Colonial people for their development and welfare, and


our trust to the world that, in accepting and assuming responsibility for Colonial Territories we would be ensuring that the resources of those territories would be available, not only to their peoples and to us but to the world as a whole.
The details of the Bill have been fairly thoroughly discussed, and the amounts to be spent are clear enough. In the five years ahead, we are proposing to spend £95 million in new money, as against £80 million of new money in 1955, and there is an unspent balance of £44 million this time, as against £40 million last time. That means that the total, in money terms, is about £139 million, as against £120 million in 1955. There has been some depreciation in the value of money though, even so, there is an increase in real terms, and that increase is considerably augmented when we take into account the fact that two large territories —Malaya and Nigeria—are not included in the provision for the years ahead.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) very rightly asked whether the amounts we were putting forward were sufficient for the need. He stressed the serious problem of overpopulation that threatens so many of the Colonial Territories. As he knows, the relative increase of population and of productive capacity varies tremendously from one territory to another. Overall, the increase in income has been about 4 per cent. and that of population about 2 per cent. We are, therefore, still just beating it, but it would be misleading to think that this applied in every case. There are territories in which the balance has been going the other way.
The hon. Gentleman asked what the difference was between the requirements of the Colonies and the allocation we were putting forward. We have not based the Bill's provisions on detailed plans prepared by colonial Governments—in most cases, they have not made plans so far ahead—but there is very close contact and liaison between the Colonial Office and the different colonial Governments. We have based our estimates on knowledge of the plans they are considering, on our assessment of their financial prospects and needs, and on an assessment of the amount of development that the territories can carry out, from the point of view of their physical capacity, taking

into account the participation and contribution that they themselves will make to the different plans that are possible.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. M. Clark Hutchison) asked whether we should have special machinery for determining the priorities. I am a little doubtful whether a matter or this sort can be delegated to a committee. Very often the decisions turn on matters of policy. The very special grants which are being given to Malta are an instance of the kind of thing I have in mind. The allocations will be made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and, as last time. Parliament will be informed of what they are. There will be plenty of opportunity through the ordinary machinery of Questions to probe the decisions that we have taken. We are working on these now.
There are two types of allocation in the main—a rather small but essential allocation devoted mainly to research, and the great bulk of the allocation which will go to the different territories. In my view, though I may be wrong, research and communications are really the key to development and welfare—the building of roads, railways, bridges and harbours on the communications side, and research into both health and agricultural development. Agriculture, after all, is the subject with which 90 per cent. of the population are concerned. It is still their way of life.

Mr. Callaghan: Will the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend think about this question of machinery between now and the Committee stage? From what the Under-Secretary says, it means that a civil servant—I am sure very estimable and hard-working—in the Colonial Office has to have the major responsibility for these decisions. They cannot all be considered in full detail by Ministers. Is there not a lot to be said for having a group of people to whom these matters could be submitted and who could advise the Colonial Secretary in the light of their knowledge of the Colonial Territories? It would submit the judgment of the civil servant to the arbitrament of people who are at least as able as he is to make a choice between priorities.

Mr. Amery: I think the Colonial Office is the machine best equipped for this purpose. The whole Department gives a good deal of its mind to it, and all the different regional departments within it bring their thoughts to bear on these matters which are gone into very thoroughly.

Mr. Callaghan: Are they not all fighting their own battles?

Mr. Amery: No, it does not work in that way.
Education and health are, of course, absolutely vital because the human resources of these territories are in many cases more important—certainly more important morally, and even economically they are more important—than their physical resources.
On the subject of education, the hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson) was rather worried about the proportions allocated to education. He asked in particular whether the recommendations of the Lockwood Report on East African university education would be accepted and financed by colonial development and welfare funds. The Report has only just been published and is still under consideration by the East African Governments. If its provisions were to be accepted it would certainly be eligible for colonial development and welfare assistance. I think the hon. Gentleman was a little overlooking the fact that development and welfare funds are only one source of education expenditure. The vast bulk of expenditure on primary and secondary education in the Colonies is financed by the Colonies' own budgets.
The part which colonial development and welfare plays is mostly in capital expenditure. If it interests the hon. Gentleman, I can tell him that since 1946 colonial development and welfare contributions have been £12 million—indeed, nearly £13 million—on primary and secondary education; £5½ million on technical and vocational education; and £10½ million on higher education. Thus the colonial development and welfare contribution amounts to about £27 million. If my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Head) were here, he could no doubt tell us haw many Blue Streaks that is worth.
The health side seems to me no less important than the educational one, and I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) that there is already a system by which hospital registrars from this country go to Uganda. There is interchangeability there, and we hope we may be able to develop this process further.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kirk-dale (Mr. N. Pannell) asked us whether we attempt to dictate the styles in which the schools were built. It may amuse him to know that we were taken to task by the Public Accounts Committee for not insisting on certain building standards, but, in fact, we have never attempted to dictate to them. Indeed, I often think that there is an inclination to think too much in terms of buildings and furniture for schools when what is more important are teachers and small classes, particularly in tropical countries.
The hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney) pleaded for more expenditure on training for the overseas service. I hardly liked to seek the advice of my officials about this, because it seems to me that they would be unlikely to disagree with his suggestion. My inquiries have shown that the amount of money spent by the colonial development and welfare funds on training is considerable, though it is not the only source for this service. The colonial Governments themselves spend large amounts on it, including among other things, scholarship schemes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South stressed the importance of television in Aden. I was very much impressed by what he said on that score. It is something which we have in mind, but we have not yet reached any decision upon it. The hon. Member for Bilston (Mr. R. Edwards) also pleaded for the establishment of a hotel in Sierra Leone. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Goodhart) has already been talking to me on that subject, and we shall certainly pay what attention we can to these representations.
The problem of the smaller territories is one which is brought to the fore by development and welfare assistance. The hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. C. Hughes) spoke at some length on St. Helena on this subject, and I will not


attempt to answer all his points, but I remember that he told me that I was misinformed in regard to some statistics which I gave him. I will look into that point, and let him know in due course.
Malta is the outstanding example of the way in which the smaller territories can be dependent on development and welfare assistance. As the House knows, £29 million will be given to Malta in the next five years, and of that sum £24 million comes from colonial development and welfare funds. At least £5 million will go on the dockyard. I must express regret tonight at the recent riots that took place in the dockyard at Malta. The money that comes from development and welfare funds can only have the effect of priming the pump by getting the dockyard going. The dockyard will prosper only if business comes to it, if people bring their ships in for refitting and repairing, and a not of this kind does strike at confidence, gives the impression of instability and disorder and can do great harm to the livelihood of the Maltese people.
The question has been asked whether the money we allocate is enough. The hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn spoke about some of the things that would be done if her party were to come to power, and we have an authoritative statement, with which I think she was connected, in which there was an assurance that 1 per cent. of our national income would be spent over a period of years for that purpose as
Britain's contribution to the development of backward and colonial territories through the existing Government, United Nations and other appropriate agencies.
I am not clear what is meant by this. It does not sound as if it is only the Colonial Territories. It sounds as if it is going to a lot of territories outside the Commonwealth.
However, 1 per cent. spent of our national income would be about £175 million, but the net outflow of long-term investment funds at present to the Commonwealth, accompanied by grants in aid to the Commonwealth and Colonies, is about £200 million at the moment, or 1¼ per cent. What is the colonial share? The flow of United Kingdom private funds for capital purposes, and of United Kingdom Government funds for current and capital purposes, is running at about £100 million

at the moment. That is to the Colonial Territories alone. The statement here refers to "backward and Colonial Territories". I am not quite clear how much there is between us on that point.

Mrs. Castle: May I clarify that? We always, of course, included in that figure contributions to the United Nations agencies which go to backward countries, not necessarily our own Colonies; but that, at present, is not a very large item. We should be prepared to channel it all increasingly through the United Nations if the S.U.N.F.E.D. scheme were adopted. Certainly, there would still be a very big difference between our sum and the Government's.

Mr. Amery: It is not quite clear whether there would be a very big difference, in fact, between the £100 million we are already channelling into Colonial Territories and what would remain of the £175 million after other territories had had their share. It would seem to be fairly marginal.
I do not think that this is a very accurate pamphlet. I find that in page 19 £110 million is described as
raised in loans by colonial governments".
This is for 1954. In fact, the sum raised was only £16 million on the London market and very small sums locally. It is not really very accurate. Similarly, in page 13, we are told that in 1955
the Conservative government claimed great credit for increasing under its new Colonial Development and Welfare Act "—
this is 1955—
the sum available … to … £20 million a year as against £14 million previously".
In fact, we raised it to £24 million a year.

Mr. Callaghan: Is the hon. Gentleman running out of speech?

Mr. Amery: Certainly not. I am just giving the House these details. Accuracy is quite important in these matters, I think. I have some other documents here; I have the nice glossy one, "The Future Labour Offers You". I have done a great deal of constructive reading during the last few days.
The sums of money we have made available so far have been consistently underspent. As the House knows, we are doing away with the annual ceiling this year, but right from the origin of the


colonial development and welfare legislation, the sums have been annually underspent.
There is the new provision for Exchequer loans, about which a number of questions have been asked. The Exchequer type of lending, with the repayment of principal and interest, is not, of course, a new thing. It is applied in most loans to public and local authorities in this country. It was applied by the Government of the party opposite to the C.D.C. It figured in the Commonwealth assistance loans announced at Montreal. It is not a particularly new thing. Deliberately, the terms are not as attractive as market loans because we think that the market machinery is the more appropriate for colonial Governments to use.
If a country is moving towards self-government, one of the important things for it to do is to establish its credit in the world market and, more particularly, we hope, if it is to remain in the Commonwealth, in the London market. If there is a system by which Exchequer loans are made more favourable than market loans, nobody will go to the market; they will take Exchequer loans. Any country concerned would have no chance of establishing its creditworthiness before it became self-governing.
I have often thought there was a case for preferential loans, but not in this context. Indeed, I have myself made speeches about this in the past. It is important to build up creditworthiness before a country becomes self-governing. This type of condition also has been imposed by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

J. Johnson: We all accept the condition that a State should be solid and creditworthy, but would not the hon. Gentleman accept the view that, in education, perhaps, there is a place for a special fund for that specific social service in a Colony?

Mr. Amery: That is what development and welfare grants are supposed to meet. This is in addition to the loans. The grant is supposed to meet a certain area of the requirements of the Colonies. The loans are for a requirement over and above that. It is an additional requirement. I do not think that it would have been right, unless we are to undermine

the whole structure of establishing creditworthiness on the Landon market, to have offered Exchequer loans at more favourable rates than those prevailing in the market.
We have just gone through a difficult economic situation, but it is not necessary to suppose that rates of interest will always be at a tremendous height. Conditions may change again. Money may become cheaper. This may not be as big a burden in future as it may seem to be at present. After all, there were a lot of other methods which one could have sought for approaching this task. It was suggested to us that there might be Government guarantees, and that we might underwrite all the loans, but here again we would have had no guarantee of creditworthiness and it would have been totally unselective.

Mrs. Castle: There may be something in the hon. Member's argument about establishing the creditworthiness of countries which will become independent if we were going to continue development and welfare grants to them after independence is reached. Surely the hon. Gentleman is trying to give the colonial Governments the worst of both worlds. He is forcing them to take onerous terms for loans and denying them the grants they need to meet the recurrent charges now falling so heavily upon their budgets, as in the case of Nigeria.

Mr. Amery: The hon. Lady misunderstands the position. When the countries become self-governing, they can come to the London market, and we hope that they will. If they have previously established their creditworthiness they will be able to raise money on the London market. Therefore we shall have helped them in the process here.
Grants and loans are different things. My hon. Friends the Members for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) and Wavertree wondered whether we were right in having loans that were not tied to British exports. Commonwealth assistance loans under the Export Guarantees Act are tied. These are loans negotiated between independent sovereign countries. A tied element has never been a feature of development and welfare grants. One of the reasons for that is that a major share of what the money is spent on is local resources. To try to place obligations on the Colonies to spend here


when they can spend locally would be a complicating factor.
There is the other side of the picture which we must remember and to which the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn drew attention. In the difficult war-time and post-war years the Colonies were of tremendous support to us in accepting the very rigid discipline of the sterling area which we had to impose to come through. It is right that in the more prosperous climate in which we are moving today they should get the greater freedom which we can at the moment afford to give. We are confident that in any case our competitive power will be sufficient to enable us to hold our own in the colonial market.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wavertree asked about the colonial sterling balances. There is not as much room here as one might have hoped for or indeed as much as the party opposite have suggested in one of their pamphlets for mobilising the sterling balances of the Colonies. They are already pretty tied up, not only on currency backing, but on commodity assistance to cushion the small producers against sharp falls in the cost of primary commodities.
I now come to the question which several hon. Members, particularly the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East, put to me as to why the emerging countries cease to be eligible for development and welfare grants when they become sovereign.

Mr. Callaghan: Mr. Callaghan indicated dissent.

Mr. Amery: Several hon. Members made the point. I thought that the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East did as well. Certainly the hon. Lady the Member for Blackburn made this point. The reason is that these particular grants are specifically for the Colonies. That does not mean that there are no other methods of making finance available to sovereign countries of the Commonwealth. After all, the Colombo Plan was an extremely important scheme of the type which hon. Members opposite have in mind. As other areas become self-governing, there is no reason why they should not become eligible for a new form of assistance and aid if they have the economic requirement—such as the West Indies and others. The development

and welfare grants which we are discussing under the Bill, however, are an attempt to discharge our special responsibilities towards the countries over which we still have rule. It is our policy that commitments already undertaken should be fulfilled.
Reference was made to Nigeria. In the last two or three years, Nigeria has begun to mobilise her own resources to a far greater extent than ever before. She is using her available sterling balances for development and there has been a very large investment from the oil companies in Nigeria. All this has eased the situation there to a considerable extent.
We claim that by and large, grants totalling Cl39 million, Exchequer loans totalling £100 million and market loans such as can be raised in addition represent a fairly large scale of development potential.
Of course, there are still fairly serious limiting factors. As my right hon. Friend has said, skilled manpower is no longer the limiting factor that it has been in the past. It is the recurrent costs that tend more and more to make the Colonies hesitate before embarking on some of these development projects. The fundamental problem here is whether trade policies will be such as to make it possible for the Colonies to pay their way in the world and to finance the cost of these recurrent schemes.
Expanding world trade would be the ideal solution and we can do something to help this. Expanding Commonwealth trade is something which we can influence much more. There is need for us to be flexible in our approach. In my view, the sheet anchors of expanding Commonwealth trade have always been the sterling area and the preference system, even today. I have always regretted that with the Washington loan the party opposite sold the pass and lost the chance of increasing Imperial Preference. Commodity agreements have, in many cases, an important part to play. The Commonwealth Sugar Agreement is of crucial importance. I am not, in principle or theoretically, so very hostile to bulk buying, but it is important to realise that there is considerable scepticism about it on the part of the primary commodity producers. They rather fear the emergence of monolithic, monopolistic buyers.

Mr. J. Johnson: Do all the Colonies object to it?

Mr. Amery: Not necessarily, but I have talked to people coming from a number of different Colonies who hold this view. I do not say that they all hold it, but it is the view of a number of representatives of colonial opinion.
I have indicated the broad reasons why we consider that the criticisms that have been made against us are not valid. In any case, I hope that the House will support the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Bryan.]

Committee Tomorrow.

COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT AND WELFARE [MONEY]

[Queen's Recommendation signified.]

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees).

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make further provision with respect to the development and welfare of colonies and other territories, it is expedient to authorize—

(a) the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase in sums payable out of such moneys under the Colonial

Development and Welfare Acts, 1940 to 1955, being an increase attributable to provisions of the said Act of the present Session—

(i) modifying or removing the limit on the duration of any scheme made under section one of the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, 1940,
(ii) increasing the limit on the aggregate amount of payments for the purposes of schemes so made from two hundred and twenty million pounds to three hundred and fifteen million pounds,
(iii) removing the annual limit on the amount of payments for the purposes of schemes so made, or
(iv) authorising the making of schemes with respect to bodies established for the joint benefit of a territory for which schemes may be made under section one of the said Act of 1940 and a territory which has ceased to be one for which such schemes may be made;
(b) the issue out of the Consolidated Fund of sums required for making loans under the said Act of the present Session up to one hundred million pounds in all, and the raising of money under the National Loans Act, 1939, for the purpose of providing sums to be so issued or for the replacement of sums so issued;
(c) the payment into the Exchequer of sums received by way of interest on, or in repayment of, loans made by virtue of the said Act of the present Session, and the issue of those sums out of the Consolidated Fund for the purpose of applying so much thereof as represents principal in redemption or repayment of debt and so much thereof as represents interest towards meeting such part of the annual charges for the national debt as represents interest.—[Mr. Lennox-Boyd.]

Resolution to be reported.

Report to be received Tomorrow.

DOUGLAS, LANARKSHIRE (EMPLOYMENT)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Bryan.]

10.1 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Maitland: I rise to draw attention to the problem of a village in my constituency in Scotland, the village of Douglas, which, within a few months, is losing half of its industry and one-third of its population. It is a village which sees the specters of ruin for a whole community because Castle Douglas Colliery and the nearby Andershaw Colliery are being or have been closed, in the one case through the National Coal Board's closure policy, in the other through the exhaustion of reserves.
Before these closures had begun to take place there was already a dispiriting mood in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire in that in a matter of three years the number of mining jobs in that area had declined by something like 380 out of 5,600, a proportion of 8 per cent. When these two other collieries have completed their closure about the same number of miners will again have become redundant, making a total redundancy in mining jobs in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire of about 16 per cent. over three years.
That is the dispiriting background against which the village of Douglas now has to face this body blow to its existence, in that the colliery on which it is at least half dependent is closing altogether and about one-third of its people are going to have to move away. When miners and others from that village came to me the other day to announce that the water has been rising in that colliery at the rate of 20 ft. a day since the closure began to take effect and when they told me that the 8 ft. seam of good coal was now under water I sensed a moment of drama not unlike the sense of a ship going down.
This village has a population of 2,600, some 480-odd subsidised houses either built and owned by the county council or built and owned by the Scottish Special Housing Association, a total investment, I suppose, of about £1 million. Something like 240 of the miners resident in the village are going to be redundant with-

in a matter of months, and we have it on high authority that about 200 of the families, totalling, I suppose, about 800 people, are going in effect to be driven from this village of 2,600 people within a matter of months to seek mining work elsewhere. When a village loses one-third of its people in a matter of months it is a body blow; it is a killing blow.
My concern is to ask my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State and, through him, the Government to do everything possible to attract substitute industry to this area. I begin by asking him whether he would pursue the point made in a letter which his Department wrote on 15th January saying that the Government are
keeping the list of areas eligible for D.A.T.A.C. assistance under review.
Will the Government look very carefully at the possibilities of Douglas, in view of the figures which I have just given?
The two main committees of villagers which have been meeting to rally their forces and to decide what they want have now agreed quite plainly and categorically that they want new industry in the village Only last week they called on the second district council of Lanark for an emergency meeting to discuss this matter.
I plead with the Government to give active aid to save the very existence of this village, to save an extensive public investment from going to waste, and to avert the possibility of dismay degenerating into despair. So far, Lanark County Council officials have not yet made available to me such factual data as they possess about possible industrial sites in the area, though I have no doubt that they shortly will do so and I hope that they will. In the meantime, I am therefore very grateful to my hon. Friend and the Government for already having had one site in the area vetted by the Board of Trade inspectors. I refer to the Happendon Camp site, but there are others, and I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to tell me that these other sites and possibilities are being looked at.
About forty-five of the children remaining at Douglas West School could now take up some of the fifty-nine vacancies in Douglas School. What about that building for conversion into a factory? What about the conversion of the Miners' Welfare Hall in Douglas


west into a factory? What about the Douglas West Miners' Baths for conversion into a dairy? My hon. Friend will know that I have taken that matter up with him. I hope that he and the Government will draw the attention of the Scottish Milk Marketing Board and other bodies to that possibility.
What about the building known as Cotton Houses in Ayr Road, and the district known as Sliddery, and the old manse which might be turned either into an hotel or an office building? Will my hon. Friend ask the Board of Trade to take a look at all these possibilities? In parenthesis, I should like to tell him that I have discussed all these with the local laird who is more than willing to make any ground available that is found useful to industry.
The Board of Trade stated in a debate in the House on 10th February, that grants under Section 5 of the Distribution of Industry Act, 1945, could be made available to local authorities for site preparation. Could my hon. Friend tell me how big these grants are and whether they will be available for preparing industrial sites only or whether they can be used for adapting buildings to industrial use? Can they be used for the development of social amenities? Some of the very enterprising villagers in Douglas have made a number of suggestions about social amenities that could be developed to meet the needs of the locality. The old manse could be adapted either as an hotel or as offices. There is a garden nearby that could be made into a children's playgarden, with a pool for paddling in the summer and for skating or curling in the winter. There might also be a caravan park. Can these grants be made available for these purposes, and has the local authority been told how to apply for them and what the conditions are?
On 22nd January, the President of the Board of Trade in a Written Answer to me said that the Government are ready to consider building specific factories for particular interested firms that might wish to set up a factory in North Lanarkshire. My right hon. Friend also added that he was watching the situation in South Lanarkshire. Can my hon. Friend say whether the Government are yet prepared to consider the needs of Douglas

which, on the figures I have given, are quite extraordinary in that context? Is the Board of Trade yet willing to go further than watching t—he situation in South Lanarkshire? Will it actually agree that the village of Douglas, at any rate, merits the same sort of help as has already been made available to North Lanark as set out in the Minister's answer an 22nd January? Can the Minister say whether, if there was a willing customer, the Government would consider building a specific factory in Douglas? If so, would that also apply to putting up an office building or adapting some existing structure?
Another possibility has been recently brought to my mind. Some years ago in the village of Coalburn, about five miles away, there used to be a plant for the low temperature carbonisation process, which is a method of turning waste or bad coal into oil and gas and smokeless fuel. Will my hon. Friend draw the attention of the Ministry of Power to the possibility of reviving that plant? It used to be owned by a firm called the Comac Oil Company, Limited. Is the Minister prepared to assist in the encouragement of a company willing to try to revive that process and help to find a use for surplus coal?
On 25th February, the Second District Council of the County of Lanark minuted this decision:
It was agreed to recommend to the County Council that an agreement be entered into with Glasgow for taking overspill population to Douglas which must be accompanied by industry in order that tenancy of empty houses caused by transfer of men to Ayrshire may be taken up and to save Douglas from becoming a derelict area.
Will the Minister take note of that, and of the fact that at the moment there are about 40 subsidised houses in perfectly good condition standing empty in the village? If the forecast I have been given of perhaps 200 families having to leave the village comes true, within this year there may be 200 houses which Douglas could contribute to the reception of overspill. Will the Minister confirm in public the assurance which he gave me in a letter of 6th January that where an area is prepared to accept overspill, the Government would do their best to call attention of industrialists and others inquiring about possibilities to the merits of that area? I hope that my hon.


Friend will give us some help in this matter and assist in spreading the word about: the amenities which exist for industry in this village.
Douglas lies in the A.74 trunk road between Carlisle and Glasgow. It is not far from the trunk road to Stirling and it is close to the trunk road to Edinburgh. It is about 40 miles from Glasgow and the same distance from Edinburgh, and about 70 miles from Carlisle. Here are some of the amenities I ask my hon. Friend to bear in mind when considering the merits of Douglas, as a site for incoming industry. It lies on the railway line between Motherwell and Carstairs on the one hand and Cumnock on the line between Dumfries and Carlisle on the other. There are two stations nearby, one with two loading bays and a crane. It lies in a position between the site of the future strip mill at Motherwell and the mass market in Glasgow and Northern England. Therefore it lies on the natural route for materials that might pass from that mill for processing before manufacture and sale in the mass market of Northern England. The village is close to the Grid. There are abundant supplies of water from the Dear water scheme. The Happendon camp site, which the Board of Trade has already taken a look at and listed as possible, is on high ground and is free from flooding.
Male and female labours are available in the neighbourhood. The population of the neighbourhood is about 12,000. As to the quality of the female labour and its trainability, I would ask any inquiring industrialist to have a word with the directors of Messrs. James Macfarlane, who came to Lanark to open a shirt factory, with results to their very great satisfaction. So far as concerns young men for electricians, engineers, etc., a number of them have already started to learn a trade and they are excellent trainable material.
Another amenity at Douglas which outweighs all the rest and is worth presenting to industrialists is the excellent record of the area in labour relations. Unlike the strife-torn and strike-strewn areas of North Lanark, the upper ward of Lanark, in general, and the villages in the area of Douglas, in particular, are almost strike-free and have been so for years. The workers there are loyal, sober and hard-

working. Any industrialist who comes there will find excellent labour relations built into the fabric of the community.
It is a village which has a strong community sense as well as an ancient history of which it is proud. The countryside is healthy and beautiful. Any industrial executives or management personnel who are wondering where they can find a place to live in the country would do well to get their factories out there and to find a house nearby, which is not difficult. I ask the Minister to hear these things in mind in considering how to make them as widely known as possible.
The story I have to bring to him is not only that of a village with possibilities but the spectre of a ruined village where 800 out of 2,600 people are likely to move within a matter of months because of a decrease in mining employment in the area of 16 per cent. over three years. I would recall to him the note of dereliction and of drama when they came to me and said. "The eight-foot seam is flooded". I ask the Minister and through him the Government, to do all he can to encourage the local authority to go wholeheartedly into the overspill operation. I ask him to help to make Douglas's case as widely known as possible, and to bear in mind the social investment in the village which threatens to go to waste. This is an earnest and, I know he will agree, a passionate S.O.S.

10.19 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Niall Macpherson): My hon. Friend the Member for Lanark (Mr. Patrick Maitland) has raised the question of the conditions at Douglas and has made a very constructive speech. He has asked a great number of questions and has done an excellent piece of propaganda for his constituency.
Ever since the announcement was made, I know that my hon. Friend has been doing all he can to prevent hardship from falling upon the village and to save it, as he said, from becoming a derelict area. He has badgered and bombarded the Scottish Office, the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Power and the Ministry of Labour, hardly giving my right hon. Friends a moment's peace. Now he has taken this opportunity of asking many questions and making many representations. I shall do my best to deal with all of them in the time available, and I undertake to reply to my hon. Friend


about any point which I have not the time to answer tonight.
I gathered that my hon. Friend accepted the sad necessity to close Douglas Castle Colliery. The brute fact is that the production of coal exceeds the demand at present prices. The N.C.B. accordingly decided to reduce deep mining capacity by 3 million tons, opencast capacity by 3 million tons, and to add 3 million tons to stock. I think it as well to put these facts on record, because it puts the question of Douglas Castle into perspective. Douglas Castle is one of the thirty-six uneconomic collieries to be closed this year, twenty of them in Scotland. The Scottish pit closures will mean that 6,450 men will lose their present jobs, but against that the Scottish Divisional Coal Board's total manpower requirements during 1959 are estimated to be about 9,000, so new jobs will be available immediately for two-thirds of those declared redundant, a further one-tenth will be placed within six months, and others thereafter.
Given co-operation by the unions and the men, this redundancy problem can, in the main, be solved with the minimum of hardship and in a relatively short period. Although there are likely in Scotland as a whole to be more vacancies than redundancies arising from pit closures, the position in Douglas village is exceptional for two reasons. The first is because of the relatively isolated situation, and the second because about two-thirds of the miners in the village have hitherto been employed at Douglas Castle Colliery. Of the 332 men employed at that pit, it is estimated that about 70 will not be found other work in the mines. These are mainly older men and men who will be retired on health grounds, but the National Coal Board hopes to offer jobs to about 260, and 120 of these jobs will be within travelling distance, which means the men need not change their homes, and 140 vacancies are in other coal fields where men who transfer will get houses. These figures are estimates and should not be taken as firm or final. After all, it will be for the men themselves to decide whether to go and where to go. Redeployment will be arranged in consultation with the unions and the individuals concerned.
So far 126 have been given notice. I think my hon. Friend will be interested

to know that of these 53 have found jobs which do not entail their moving, 46 have found jobs in other areas—my hon. Friend said that about 40 houses are left vacant—and 27 have not yet been placed, mainly because of their age or their state of health. The second phase of the closure is likely to take place during the summer. It is not yet possible to estimate how many men will be unable to find work or to be placed in work.
On the basis of experience so far, however, I should doubt whether the final picture is likely to be anything like as black as my hon. Friend suggested. He spoke of one.third— of the houses standing empty by the end of this year. That would mean well over 200 houses. If that were so it would clearly be a very serious matter for the village, but my hon. Friend knows that Douglas is one of several mining villages in that part of Lanarkshire with a total population of 12,000. In that area there are within travelling distance at least nine other pits employing more than 2,100 miners, about one-half of whom travel into the district daily from other Lanarkshire towns. Even if as many as 100 or more families left Douglas many of the houses could soon be occupied, for there are miners who come from Larkhall and other places to work and who are waiting for houses. Given good will and co-operation among the various interests concerned, I really do not think that the problem to be solved will be nearly as great as my hon. Friend imagines.
At one point my hon. Friend seemed to be suggesting that the houses vacated should all—or most of them—be kept empty until they could be filled by people coming from Glasgow under "Operation Overspill". It is for the county council to decide whether to sign an overspill agreement with Glasgow Corporation, and I note what my hon. Friend said about the resolution of the district council. If the county council decides to cater for overspill, Douglas would not be in a position to attract families from Glasgow until there was work.
I am afraid that with so many authorities willing to receive overspill there can be no guarantee that industry would be secured for Douglas within a given period. It would be impossible to justify keeping the houses vacant indefinitely if miners who travel daily into the Douglas


area want them. I do not mean that the overspill solution should be ruled out. If a new industry came to the district, house building for overspill population could proceed concurrently with the erection of the factory.
If Lanarkshire County Council decides to conclude an overspill agreement with Glasgow Corporation the Government would certainly draw the attention of suitable industrialists to the facilities there, no less than to those in any other prospective receiving areas. All the same, I must make it clear to my hon. Friend that there could be no guarantee that an agreement to provide houses for Glasgow workers would in itself, or automatically, result in attracting industry within a given period.
On the other hand, the conclusion of an overspill agreement might well improve the prospects of industry being obtained for the area, since an incoming industrialist would then know that he could supplement the limited number of workers available locally with workers drawn from Glasgow, and there would also be opportunities for attracting to the area firms displaced from redevelopment areas in Glasgow itself.
My hon. Friend asked about factory building. It is not the Government but the county council as local planning authority which has the power to build factories, with the consent of the Secretary of State. Such factories might be let, hire-purchased, or sold outright. Naturally, before these powers were exercised both the county council and the Secretary of State would wish to be assured that there would be an economic return on the investment and also that the firm was itself financially sound, since otherwise the ratepayers might easily be left with the burden of an empty factory.
I turn, next, to the clearance of derelict sites. My hon. Friend mentioned a number of sites and asked some questions. I can reply to my hon. Friend only in general terms. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade informed the House on 10th February that grants were being revived to encourage local authorities to clear derelict sites in the Development Areas—Douglas is in one—with a view either to their subsequent use or to the improvement of amenities. That covers the questions which my hon. Friend asked. It includes the improvement of amenities.
My hon. Friend also asked whether local authorities have yet been informed about this. The Secretary of State will be sending a circular to local authorities within the next few days explaining the arrangements for the grants, which will be of up to 75 per cent. of approved expenditure on clearance, and he will be inviting applications relating to work which could be completed by March, 1960.
My hon. Friend mentioned various other places, with which I will not deal, and in my closing remarks I hurry on to the prospect of attracting new industry. Like my hon. Friend, I am keenly aware of the need to bring industry to mining villages such as Douglas in order to provide work for the women and also to provide alternative employment for the men. This need is there even without the closure of the pits. Indeed, the closure of the pits emphasises the need. I hope, however, that my hon. Friend will be under no illusion about the difficulties to be overcome. As he knows, although Douglas is in the scheduled Development Area under the Distribution of Industry Act, 1945, the President of the Board of Trade is limiting the areas in which he is willing to build factories to five areas, and South Lanarkshire is not one of them. if anybody built a factory there for industry, it would be the county council.
My hon. Friend asked about D.A.T.A.C. assistance. The Distribution of Industry (Industrial Finance) Act, which Parliament passed last year, provides for Treasury assistance to be available in places where
a high rate of unemployment exists and is likely to persist.
At present unemployment in the Douglas area has not reached a high rate. The terms of the Act do not allow D.A.T.A.C. assistance to be given in areas where unemployment is merely threatened —

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the standing order.

Adjourned at twenty-nine minutes to Eleven o'clock.